


Hold On

by Survivor4Life



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Byun Baekhyun-centric, Gen, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Interrogation, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Kidnapping, Missing Persons, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Panic Attacks, Police investigation, Protective Dongsaengs, Protective Hyungs, Protective Park Chanyeol, Rape Recovery, Recovery, Why Did I Write This?, protective members
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:42:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 23
Words: 57,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24495220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Survivor4Life/pseuds/Survivor4Life
Summary: "We just have to hold on to …""Hold on? My best friend is missing and those people know where he is! Those people are the ones who left him there after whatever they did to him and you're telling me to hold on?"
Comments: 144
Kudos: 379





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the person who requested this. I hope I don't let you down! Everyone, please be wary of the tags and stay safe

**KPOP SINGER STILL MISSING**

_Byun Baekhyun (변백현), the 28-year-old vocalist of the popular Korean boyband, EXO, was supposed to be setting out on a stadium tour with his fellow members when he disappeared nearly three days ago. Seoul police detective, Kim Hongjo, suspects foul play. Two suspects, both male and of approximate age to the victim, are currently in custody and refusing to cooperate with the investigation. However, Detective Kim has stated that, without a body or a confirmed witness, he cannot prove that a crime has been committed but he maintains that the circumstances surrounding Byun’s disappearance are certainly suspicious enough to warrant further investigation. Authorities only have twelve hours left to hold the men in custody without an official charge. Needless to say, time is running out and hopes of finding Byun alive are fading fast._


	2. Perks Of A Celebrity

It wasn’t supposed to go like this. He was only supposed to be gone for a couple of hours. Nobody was even supposed to realise he wasn’t in his room. It wasn’t supposed to go like this.

It was 11:12pm when Baekhyun pulled his mask over his nose, clamped his hair down with a ballcap and slipped out of his hotel room. It was too late for anyone to be in the hallways and booking a room in this place, even for just one night, seemed to cost about as much as a small car.

The perks of being a worldwide celebrity.

They had only arrived in Busan a couple of hours ago and none of them had possessed the energy to make any posts on social media so there was no chance that any fans could have pinpointed their location. No one was supposed to know.

That was why it was so goddamn inconvenient when he turned the corner at the end of the hallway and found himself face to face with a very sleepy-looking Sehun.

For several moments, they just stood there, staring, as though each of them was waiting for the other to say something. Sehun’s eyes zipped over Baekhyun’s attire and narrowed ever so slightly in suspicious realisation.

“Where are you going?”

Baekhyun paused, mind racing at the speed of light as he tried to come up with some believable excuse for why he was sneaking out of their hotel without telling anyone the night before a concert.

“This,” he finally settled on, tilting his head back and making his eyes very wide as he raised his hands and started wafting them around his face. “Is a dream. You’re fast asleep right now. It’s all a dream.”

Sehun scowled, “Why would I be dreaming about you?”

“I don’t know! It’s your dream, Sehun! Take responsibility for yourself!”

Sehun continued to scowl and Baekhyun gave a sigh of defeat as he came to the conclusion that his maknae was not going to let him go without some kind of explanation.

“I’m going out to see Jaeseon.”

“Your friend from high school? I thought he was studying abroad!”

“He is,” Baekhyun deflected, glancing nervously over his shoulder to make sure no one else was about to discover his escapade. “But he’s in town for his sister’s wedding and I haven’t seen him in years. I swear, I’m not going to drink or show my face or let anyone take any photos and I’ll be back by two at the very latest.”

He knew it was a big ask. They weren’t supposed to be doing anything that wasn’t resting and preparing themselves for tomorrow’s performance and they definitely weren’t supposed to be leaving the hotel without telling the management.

But Jaeseon had been his best friend for three years and he’d missed him while he was off studying in China. Even if it was only for a few hours, he wanted to get the chance to catch up with him.

“Please, Sehun,” he begged, pressing his hands together in front of him. “No one will even realise I’m gone.”

Sehun blinked a couple more times, raised his eyebrows and then let out a sigh of exasperation in the way that he always did when he was feeling smug about one of his hyungs needing a favour from him.

And that was how Baekhyun knew that he’d won.

“Fine,” the maknae exhaled. “But I had nothing to do with this. If you get caught, it’s on you. And don’t you dare mess things up for us tomorrow.”

Baekhyun grinned at him, lurching forwards to take the kid’s face in his hands and squish his cheeks before he could be batted away, “I won’t. Thank you. Love you.”

He was darting past his human obstacle and jogging down the hallway before a further word could be said, glancing down at his phone as he leapt into the elevator and pressed the ground floor button.

Jaeseon and a couple more of their high school friends were congregating at a bar a few blocks away for a round of drinking and sharing humiliating memories of when they were all young and shiny and had unrealistic dreams.

Baekhyun would be lying if he said he wasn’t looking forward to being able to gloat about how successful he’d grown especially since the vast majority of his classmates had mocked and ridiculed him for his choice of profession.

He flagged down a taxi and conveyed the address. What he’d said to Sehun hadn’t been a lie at all. He really wasn’t planning on touching a drop of alcohol. He just wanted to feel like a normal human being at an informal high school reunion.

It wasn’t supposed to go like this.

The bar was small but packed, at least a couple of dozen people knocking back their heads and downing bottles of Soju as they cackled at each other’s jokes and pressed one another up against walls so they could kiss and … stuff.

Suddenly, he was extremely wary of his predicament. If he got photographed in a place like this, even if he was just in the background, he could face all sorts of backlash even if he did nothing wrong. And knowing Dispatch, they were probably lurking in the bathrooms with their cameras at the ready.

But then he heard an all-too familiar voice yelling his nickname across the room.

“Bacon!”

It was impossible to feel anything but joy as he saw Jaeseon’s flushed face tottering towards him through the crowd and a grin spread across his face even before his friend tumbled rather drunkenly into his arms.

“I missed you!” Jaeseon slurred, tucking Baekhyun’s head beneath his chin and petting his hair like a dog. “You’re still so tiny!”

“And you’re still a lightweight,” Baekhyun countered. “How are you drunk already?”

He pulled away from the clumsy embrace just in time to see a gaggle of slightly-less-drunk-looking guys making their way over. There were five of them and each of their faces had a slightly rosy tint from the effects of the alcohol but Jaeseon most definitely took the trophy.

“Baekhyun,” the first one acknowledged with a grin, wrapping his arm around their drunken member’s waist and probably taking the majority of his weight. “It’s been a long time. Heard you made it big.”

The second scoffed, “Don’t pretend to play it cool. You jump on every opportunity to tell people you went to school with an Exo member.”

Baekhyun just laughed nervously, ducking his head and rubbing at the back of his neck as a flush threatened to creep up his cheeks. He hadn’t been as close with Doosik and Youngho as he had with Jaeseon but they’d had their moments and he was pleased to see them.

The remaining two, on the other hand, he didn’t recognise at all.

They were both taller than him but while one was long and lanky, the other was packed with muscles that bulged up against the underside of his skin. His arms were exposed by the shortness of his shirt sleeves and Baekhyun was fairly confident in saying that wasn’t an accident.

He was fairly certain he would remember somebody like that. They looked exactly the type to have been beating up the little kids behind the dumpsters after school.

“Daehwan,” the muscular guy said, sticking out his hand and practically crushing Baekhyun’s fingers with the strength of his shake. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at his buddy who was still hanging back and avoiding eye contact. “This is Tak. We’re friends of Youngho’s.”

“Baekhyun,” Baekhyun acknowledged.

Daehwan’s eyes flickered, “Oh, we know.”

“Enough!” Jaeseon announced, stumbling slightly in Youngho’s grasp. “No more chitchat. Let’s have another round! On Baekhyun!”

“Why on me?”

“You are famous, aren’t you?” Daehwan quipped, still with those flickering eyes that contained some kind of emotion Baekhyun couldn’t place. “Surely you can treat us all to a few bottles.”

He wasn’t necessarily wrong. And Baekhyun had come here to have fun even if he wasn’t planning on letting any alcohol into his system. Surely, it couldn’t hurt to buy a couple of Sojus and he could pay with cash just to protect his credit card. It seemed a little overly paranoid but Dispatch were unpredictable these days.

“Okay,” he conceded, holding up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “But just one round. I think Jaeseon’s going to keel over if he has any more than that. Where are we sitting?”

He couldn’t even begin to describe how good it felt to just be a civilian. Despite Youngho’s apparent infatuation with name dropping every chance he got, the subject of his career petered off fairly quickly in favour of teasing Jaeseon on just how easy it was to get him drunk.

For the first time in a long time, Baekhyun could live the youth that he sacrificed to be an idol. Drinking, joking, telling stupid stories and sharing embarrassing memories. He’d never gotten to experience the small joys of his early twenties but he was certainly experiencing them now.

And making some new friends while he was at it.

At some point, Jaeseon had tried to hit on a woman who was almost definitely the wife of a leather-jacket-wearing biker and Youngho and Doosik had hastened to diffuse the situation, leaving Baekhyun alone with the two strangers.

He’d realised by now that Tak didn’t really talk at all. He just sat there, laughing whenever Daehwan laughed and agreeing with whatever Daehwan said. He seemed nice enough, though, even if he was the definition of introverted.

Daehwan, on the other hand, couldn’t seem to stop talking. About himself, his job, his success, his dating history. He never used pronouns, though, which was weird.

Baekhyun learned that the two of them worked down at the beach as lifeguards during the summer and fishermen during the winter. Daehwan spoke as if he’d grown up on the water and was the world’s best sailor but even if he was arrogant, Baekhyun enjoyed listening to the tales from a completely different life.

“We could show you tonight, if you wanted,” Daehwan offered over the top of his frosted glass bottle. “We were planning on taking the boat out anyway. You could tag along, right, Tak?”

“Yeah,” Tak nodded, still avoiding eye contact. He definitely wasn’t one for social interaction, that much was obvious.

“I can’t,” Baekhyun sighed regretfully. “Seriously, I wish I could. I’ve always wanted to try sailing but I have to get back to my hotel before my manager sends out the search party.”

Daehwan sucked in a breath through his teeth, “Too bad. Next time, then?”

“Sure.”

Before anything more could be said, Doosik and Youngho stumbled over, dragging a very affronted-looking Jaeseon between them and panting with the effort of hefting his weight around.

“We should probably go,” Doosik mumbled as he snatched up his jacket. “The ultimate ladies’ man, here, is an idiot and those really scary-looking biker dudes are giving us the stink eye. I really don’t want to end up in a bar fight.”

“Good plan,” Baekhyun agreed, leaping up out of his chair and repositioning his mask over his face.

The very last thing he needed – the _very_ last thing – was to be caught up in a drunken brawl at a pub. It sucked that they had to cut their reunion short but they’d had a couple of hours and he really couldn’t have hoped for any more.

“Come on then, you moron,” he muttered, grabbing hold of one of Jaeseon’s flailing arms and pulling it around his shoulders in an attempt to take the taller boy’s weight. “Let’s get you out of here before you get yourself stabbed.”

The band of hooligans by the bar were indeed glowering over at them with their knuckles cracking and their overly bushy eyebrows furrowed in the centre of their scarred foreheads. They did not look like a group of people anyone would want to meet down a dark alley.

“We going to your place, baby?” Jaeseon slurred as Baekhyun and Youngho dragged him out into the street. “Or we can go to mine. Whatever floats your boat.”

“Jesus,” Baekhyun laughed. “Is he always like this?”

Youngho layered a defeated sigh over an exasperated eye roll, “Can’t even take a sip without trying to take his pants off.”

“I love you, Bacon,” Jaeseon continued. “I see you on TV sometimes and I always say, ‘that’s my Bacon!’”

“The car’s parked right around the corner,” Doosik interjected, interrupting Jaeseon’s hilarious declaration as he brandished his keys. “We’ll get him home. Baekhyun, are you good to take a taxi?”

“Sure. Just don’t let him choke on his own vomit.”

He passed his intoxicated friend over into his not-intoxicated friends’ arms and watched them teetering precariously over the pavement. From where he was standing, watching them go, it looked like Jaeseon was still trying to hit on his invisible girlfriend.

He’d always been a player, even in middle school.

“Hey,” came a low voice from behind him just before a hand appeared on his shoulder and he turned around to see Daehwan and Tak standing there expectantly. “You need a ride?”

He shook his head, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll just grab a taxi.”

“Oh, come on,” Daehwan protested, swatting Baekhyun playfully on the arm. “We’ll drop you off. Where are you staying?”

Baekhyun paused momentarily. On the one hand, he didn’t really know these guys but, on the other, he wasn’t sure how long it would take him to get a taxi and even then he didn’t know if he had enough cash left in his pocket to pay for it.

“The Hilton.”

Daehwan let out a long whistle, “Sweet. Come on, hop in. Tak will sit in the back.”

Tak didn’t look exactly thrilled at the idea but he didn’t complain, wordlessly clambering into the rear while Daehwan opened the passenger side door for his new client.

Baekhyun hesitated one last time and then he got in.

It wasn’t supposed to go like this.

**00dys 00hrs 00min 01sec**


	3. Worst Day Of Your Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where it starts getting triggering so please be wary and stay safe :)

Nobody knows that the worst day of their life is going to be the worst when they wake up that morning. Nobody knows that, in just a few short hours, their world is going to be shattered into a billion jagged fragments. Nobody knows that what they thought was the worst day of their life is no longer going to be the worst.

Nobody knows.

Sehun was roused by the tentative calls of his manager and the gentle brush of fingertips against his shoulder, gradually pulling him from the tentacles of unconsciousness and into the realm of the living. He rolled over in bed, blinking blearily up at the sheepish smile looming over him and mumbled his acknowledgement.

“’m awake.”

The manager nodded and, a few seconds later, there was the click of the door closing as the man left the idol to his morning routine.

It was only 7am but, for them, that was considered a lie-in. They would have to be in the car by 7:30, at the concert hall at 8:00 and getting ready for their first soundcheck at 8:30. Only then would they be allowed to eat breakfast. It wasn’t a good way to the start the day but it was their way. They were used to it.

Sehun dragged himself from the comfort of his blankets and lumbered into the shower for a quick five-minute blast of cold water that would get his metabolism going for the morning. It wasn’t until he was drying his hair in front of the mirror that he remembered his late-night run-in.

Baekhyun had better not be hungover or else he was in for a world of pain. There was no way they would be able to practise if one of them was too achy and lethargic to stay on beat. They were already short three members with Minseok, Kyungsoo and Junmyeon in the military.

Tugging on a ballcap to hide the dampened bird’s nest of his hair, he slipped his arms into the sleeves of his jacket and emerged from his hotel room into the hallway.

Jongin was already meandering slowly towards the elevator, rotating his fist in his eye socket as though he could just scrub the sleepiness from his skull. Jongdae was busy tying his shoelaces and their manager was using his extra key to open Baekhyun’s door.

The managers always had the extra key because, if they didn’t, they would have to resort to just knocking on the doors until their charges woke up and that was very likely not going to be effective. Like, ever.

“Car’s parked outside,” came the direction from somewhere behind him. “Get yourselves settled and take a nap if you can.”

That was page one of the idol manual: sleep whenever you can wherever you can.

“Hey!”

Sehun blanched wearily, glancing over his shoulder at where their manager was sticking his head out of Baekhyun’s room, brow furrowed with confusion.

“Did someone already wake Baekhyun up?”

The seed was planted and the anxiety shoot began to grow.

“He’s not in his room?” Sehun croaked, pulse speeding up when the manager shook his head. “Then where is he?”

Idiot. His hyung was an idiot. Such a goddamn idiot. He never should have gone out in the first place. He’d better be lying facedown in some river because that was the only excuse for disappearing on them when they were already stretched so thin.

Wherever he was right now, he was on his own. Sehun wasn’t incriminating himself for his hyung’s mistake. Baekhyun was the one who’d created this mess so Baekhyun would be the one to fix it.

The others had already taken the elevator so when it came back up for Sehun, he stepped into it alone. Cursing under his breath, he tugged his phone from his pocket and dialled the idiot’s number, waiting for the number above the sliding doors to reach zero.

Voicemail.

“Hyung, seriously,” he hissed as he emerged onto the marble floor of the hotel lobby. “I don’t know what you did last night but you’d better call Manager-hyung and get him to come pick you up. Either that or you meet us at the venue.”

He hung up and tried calling one last time, and that was when he heard it. The unmistakable jangling tune of Baekhyun’s ringtone coming from the desk at the reception area.

“Hey,” he cried out, hastening over to where the hotelier was glancing down at the phone in her hand with irritation written across her face. “Hey, where did you get that? That’s my friend’s.”

She looked up at him, affronted by the disrespect in his tone, but he wasn’t at all concerned with politeness when his hyung was out there somewhere without any means of contacting them.

“Where did you get that?” he repeated urgently.

That shoot of anxiety was beginning to sprout and branch off in different directions, growing and thriving as it fed off his increasing panic.

“I don’t know,” the receptionist responded, setting the phone down on the desk and pushing it towards him. “My shift only just started and it was just sitting here when I arrived. Somebody must have found it and handed it in.”

Baekhyun wouldn’t go anywhere without his phone. Especially when they were supposed to be performing the very next day. Even if he’d dropped it somewhere, he wouldn’t rest until he’d found it and if it was still in the hotel then it shouldn’t have been that hard.

Turning away from the receptionist and her perplexed expression, Sehun scooped up his hyung’s device and unlocked it with the passcode that all of them knew by now since Baekhyun was absolutely terrible at keeping secrets.

The first app that opened was his messages, Jaeseon’s name plastered across the top of the screen.

_I’m on my way_

That was the last text Baekhyun had sent. If he really had lost his phone in the hotel then he would have typed that out before he left. Had he gotten there? Had he made it to that bar? Or had something happened on his way there?

What if he really was lying facedown in a river?

The phone rang seven times before Jaeseon picked up and every drone of the dial tone felt like a knife to Sehun’s gut. When he heard the bleary slur of, “what?” from the other end of the line, his words tumbled from his mouth before he had a chance to even think about them.

“Jaeseon, right? This is Sehun. I’m Baekhyun’s friend. You were out drinking together last night, weren’t you?”

There was a very confused pause, “…wha …?”

“Baekhyun-hyung didn’t come back,” Sehun spewed, scrubbing a hand over his face and trying as hard as he could not to break down in a panic. “So I need to know if he’s with you. I need to know what happened last night.”

His mind was begging for an immediate response. He wanted Jaeseon to say that he had Baekhyun right next to him more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life but maybe some part of him already knew that wasn’t going to happen.

“He’s not here.”

And now the sprout was a full-grown tree, compressing its mighty weight on anything that dared stunt its ascent and blotting out every last particle of light that could have possibly illuminated the path beneath.

“When was the last time you saw him? Was he ill? Did … Where is he, Jaeseon?”

“I don’t know, man!” came the slurring reply. Jaeseon was definitely hungover. “I was pretty drunk. I don’t really remember much.”

“Try!” Sehun shouted, pivoting on the spot as though some flashing sign would just appear right in front of him and tell him what to do.

He should tell somebody. One of the hyungs or his manager or maybe even the police. He should tell somebody and then he wouldn’t have to deal with this on his own anymore. But what if he was overreacting? What if Baekhyun suddenly walked through that door, completely unharmed? Then Sehun would have condemned them both.

“We met up with some friends …” Jaeseon relayed, still groggy with sleep and residual drunkenness. “I got wasted and they took me home …”

“Baekhyun-hyung took you?”

“No. Not Baekhyun. He … I think he stayed behind. No, wait, one of the guys gave him a lift back to the hotel.”

Except they clearly hadn’t. Because Baekhyun wasn’t here.

“Who was it? What’s their name?”

Would they take him? Why would they want to? Had they been in an accident? Were they in the hospital right now? Should Sehun be calling the nearest hospital and asking for a John Doe who’d been in a terrible car pileup?

“It must have been Daehwan and Tak. They were the only other ones there.”

Daehwan and Tak. Daehwan and Tak. He should write that down. The police would need to question them. Maybe even arrest them. What if they’d done something to Baekhyun? What if they’d mugged him and left him to die in a ditch?

Why had Sehun let him go?

“Full names, Jaeseon,” he demanded desperately. “What are their full names?”

“Urm … Lee? Lee Daehwan? And … Tak … I’m … I’m not sure. Maybe Han? Han Tak?”

Lee Daehwan and Han Tak. Lee Daehwan and Han Tak. He had to remember those names. Those might very well be the names he would see on the news tomorrow morning, accompanied by a picture of Baekhyun and the headline, _IDOL STAR MURDERED._

Sehun couldn’t breathe. This was real. This was actually happening and this was actually serious. Baekhyun had gotten into a car with two total strangers in the middle of the night and now he was missing. This was the stuff of true nightmares.

“Listen, Sehun, isn’t it?” Jaeseon continued, and now he sounded fully awake and considerably worried. “Daehwan … Daehwan’s kind of shifty. I don’t know a great deal about him but he’s got a record for … stuff. I want to believe that he wouldn’t do anything to Baekhyun but …”

If it was possible to be paralysed with terror, that was what was happening to Sehun right now. His lungs felt like they’d been crushed, his ribs were splintering and his diaphragm was curling in on itself.

“What sort of stuff?” he whispered hoarsely. “What sort of stuff does he have on his record, Jaeseon?”

“Dude, like I said, I don’t have all the facts …”

“Jaeseon!”

“Sexual assault. He has a history of sexual assault allegations.”

Sehun hung up the phone. He didn’t care in that moment that Jaeseon was his only source of information. He only cared that he couldn’t hold himself together for a second longer now that his head was full of images his head shouldn’t be full of.

At some point during the call, he’d wandered into a corner and the lobby was empty anyway so there was nobody there to see him pitch forwards and brace his hands on his knees. Every breath hurt. He could no longer function.

Baekhyun was missing. He could have been missing since last night and no one had known. He didn’t have his phone. He was with two complete strangers, one of whom had a history of doing horrible things.

He was _missing._ Actually, properly, criminally, legally _missing_ and Sehun had been the one to let it happen.

“Hey, Sehun, what the hell are you doing?”

He looked up, blinking through the blurriness, to see Jongdae standing in front of him with his eyebrows drawn together in bewilderment. And Sehun had to tell him. He had to tell him how badly he’d fucked up.

“What’s wrong? Are you … Is that Baekhyun’s phone?”

“Hyung.” His voice was so scratchy, barely even recognisable as his own. He looked down at the phone in his hand and watched as it shook in his grasp. “Hyung, I think we need to call the police.”

Before, Jongdae had just looked concerned, maybe a little irritated that Sehun was holding them up when the staff were already running around in search of their absconded member. Now, he looked downright alarmed.

“Why?”

Sehun gulped, as though he could just swallow the fear, but it remained resolutely lodged in his gullet. Choking him. Suffocating him.

The worst day of his life, and probably the worst of Baekhyun’s, too.

What was happening to Baekhyun right now? Was he even still alive? Was he lying somewhere, sobbing and begging for somebody to find him? Had he passed out from his injuries? From the cold? From the shock?

“I think Baekhyun-hyung’s in trouble.”

**00dys 06hrs 56min 17sec**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you want to happen. Let me know what you think will happen. Just let me know. It helps me figure out where I'm going with the story :)


	4. Pop The Bubble

“Okay, get in here,” Jongdae ordered, taking Sehun by the shoulders and practically bulldozing him through the nearest door. “Sit down.”

They had passes to the hotel’s VIP lounge but even if they didn’t, Jongdae wouldn’t have cared that they were trespassing. He needed somewhere quiet and private so he could at least try to wrap his head around what he was hearing.

Sehun sank numbly onto the leather couch and put his face in his hands, Baekhyun’s phone still clutched in his trembling fist.

“Manager-nim’s waiting for the police to get here,” Jongdae started, struggling to keep his voice level when his entire nervous system felt like it was going to burst into flames. “So you have to tell me what happened.”

He was telling himself to stay calm, that there was nothing to worry about, that Sehun was probably just overreacting due to the stress of having a member disappear on them when they were supposed to be rehearsing for a concert.

He was telling himself that Baekhyun was fine but maybe it was the familial instincts that had the hairs on the back of his neck standing erect and his fingers twitching with the urge to rip his own hair out of his scalp.

Sehun looked up, eyes bleary and fringe tangled as a result of his stress-ridden administrations, but he barely had time to open his mouth before the door was banging open and Chanyeol and Jongin were storming through.

“What the fuck is going on?” the elder of the two demanded, eyes zipping between Jongdae and Sehun and hands held up in a gesture that clearly said, _what the hell?_ “Why is Manager-nim talking to police officers outside, where is Baekhyun and why aren’t we going to the venue like we’re supposed to?”

Jongdae couldn’t answer their questions when he was just as clueless as they were and so he looked to his maknae to provide them all with the response that they needed. For the first time since Junmyeon had enlisted, he was feeling insecure with his place in the team.

“Baekhyun-hyung’s … I … He … I think he might be …”

It was all too overwhelming. Too unfamiliar. Too _wrong._ Things like this didn’t happen in real life. Things like this were reserved only for other people. This was an ‘other people’ problem that didn’t exist inside their bubble.

Their bubble was supposed to protect them and yet somebody had just waltzed into the room and popped it.

“Good morning. My name is Officer Choi.”

Jongdae assessed the man standing before them and had to resist the urge to punch a wall. This Officer Choi looked barely of age, baby-faced and inexperienced and maybe even a little bored. As though he couldn’t be bothered to deal with something as menial as a missing person.

Baekhyun was an adult. Nobody cared if an adult didn’t come home after a night at a brewery.

“What’s happening?” Jongin shouted, drawing all eyes to him with the sudden dash of panic that glanced through his tone. “Somebody, tell us what’s happening!”

“Baekhyun’s missing,” Jongdae bit out.

“He’s … He’s what?”

“This is a joke, right? I swear to fucking God, if this is some kind of hidden camera prank, it’s too fucking far! You can’t tell us he’s missing if it’s not –”

“Chanyeol,” Jongdae snapped in the coldest and most commanding voice he could manage in his state of numbed terror. “It’s not a prank. Now shut up and let us do what we can to find him.”

He didn’t want to bite their heads off at a time like this but if what Sehun had said was true and Baekhyun really was out there with a known rapist, who knew how long they had left to find him before … Jongdae cut that thought out of his head.

Because he didn’t want to admit to himself that it was almost definitely too late.

“Sehun, start talking. Don’t stutter.”

It was harsh and it was cruel but it was the kick in the ass that Sehun needed to spiral back down to earth and find the clarity he needed to relay the appropriate information to this teenager with the big brass badge.

“Lee Daehwan,” the boy spewed at once. “Lee Daehwan and Han Tak. Those are the people you need to be searching for. Those are the people who took him.”

“Slow down,” Choi soothed placatingly, procuring a notebook from his pocket and flipping leisurely through the pages until he found a blank one. “Start from the beginning.”

They didn’t have time to start at the beginning. They didn’t have time to do anything other than get out there and search. Patrol the streets, talk to the media, knock on doors, put up flyers if that was what it took.

But if they didn’t want to be dismissed as nothing more than a bunch of paranoid time wasters, they had to abide by this guy’s rules. So Sehun took a deep breath and started again.

“Last night, I couldn’t sleep. I was anxious about performing for the first time with just the five of us so I was going to walk around the hallways for a little bit and then try and go back to bed but I ran into Baekhyun-hyung. He said he was going out to meet with his friend at a bar.”

Their manager tutted angrily from the corner of the room, “And you didn’t think to mention this to me?”

“Well, I didn’t know he was going to be kidnapped by a fucking sex offender, did I?” Sehun snarled back, eyes glistening as he whipped around to glare at his manager. “He asked me not to tell anyone.”

Officer Choi had perched on the edge of the couch, notebook balanced on his knee and ballpoint pen etching various unintelligible scribbles over the lined paper but, at Sehun’s words, he glanced up and interrupted.

“Let’s not jump to any conclusions here. There’s no evidence to suggest that this is the result of a kidnapping.”

Jongdae scoffed incredulously, “Then what the fuck would you call it? He got into a car with a guy who’s known for doing some seriously fucked up shit and now he’s not here.”

But he could already see that his indignance was wasted on this so-called police officer. Even if they managed to convince the guy to file a missing person’s report, it would probably go to the bottom of a filing cabinet and get stuffed on a shelf in a storage room.

No one was going to take this seriously.

“Let’s get back to what happened,” Choi diverted, eyebrows raised in a clear expression of bored disbelief. “When did Baekhyun-ssi leave the hotel?”

Jongdae glanced at Sehun, watching the cogs whirring in that boy’s brain as he tried to remember the last time he’d seen his hyung’s face. Maybe the last time he would _ever_ see his hyung’s face.

“Maybe … Maybe just before midnight? 11:30? Something like that?”

It wasn’t specific enough. They had to be specific if they were going to stand a chance at tracking Baekhyun’s movements and they had to track Baekhyun’s movements if they wanted to get him back home.

“What was Baekhyun-ssi wearing when he left?”

Sehun screwed his eyes shut, digging the heels of his hands into his temples and wracking his memory for the correct image before he finally found it at the back of his head.

“Black jeans, red hoodie with … urm … with a slogan on it. What was the slogan? What was it? I can’t remember but it was written in white. I think it was English. He … he had a black ballcap and a black mask.”

“And what’s the bar called?”

“I … I don’t know.”

Fuck. _Fuck._

“But I can call Jaeseon back,” Sehun continued, already skimming through the contacts on Baekhyun’s phone. “That’s hyung’s friend. He was the one he went to meet at the bar.”

Jongdae could hear Choi’s sigh of irritation and it made him want to rip the guy’s throat out. Their friend was _missing,_ had mostly likely been assaulted and was maybe even dead and this guy was sighing because, to him, their _missing_ friend was just one more reason he wouldn’t be getting home early tonight.

“And what’s his full name?”

“Park Jaeseon, I think,” Sehun provided just as the call connected and the man himself started yelling at them from the other end of the line.

_“What the hell, man? You just hang up on me and then refuse to answer when I ring? You can’t fucking do that, dude!”_

“You can’t let your friends get into cars with convicted rapists either but look where we are,” Chanyeol hissed, the first time he’d spoken since he’d had this bombshell dropped on him.

 _“I was drunk,”_ Jaeseon protested and Jongdae had to give it to him; he really did sound worried. _“And Daehwan was never convicted of anything. The charges were dropped and the cases were dismissed due to lack of evidence.”_

Yeah, because that meant he was innocent. He’d intimidated his victims into withdrawing their claims and charmed the court into believing his lies. It had happened before and it would happen again because nobody ever sentenced these guys to anything more than probation.

“What was the name of the bar, Jaeseon?” Jongdae interjected, almost able to feel the clock ticking in his bones. “The one you went to last night. What was it called?”

_“The Wolfhound.”_

Choi wrote it down, “When did you all leave the bar?”

_“I’m not sure. Like I said, I was pretty out of it. Maybe 1am?”_

“And how much did Baekhyun-ssi have to drink?”

_“Nothing.”_

The police officer’s eyebrows shot up towards his hairline, gaze wandering the room as though he was waiting for somebody to start laughing and admit that Baekhyun had been so heavily intoxicated he’d needed carrying to the car that had taken him away.

“I need you to tell me the truth, Jaeseon-ssi.”

 _“That is the truth!”_ Jaeseon snapped defensively, snatching the words right out of Jongdae’s mouth. _“He was adamant. He wouldn’t touch a drop so don’t you dare go blaming this on alcohol because he was perfectly sober. I know how you people think. If he shows up dead, you’re just going to say he was drunk and make it out like he had it coming but I’m not going to let that happen because it’s not the truth!”_

Jongdae felt sick. He wanted to side with Jaeseon and back up his argument, insisting to this inexperienced teenager that Baekhyun would never be stupid enough to have even half a bottle of Soju when they were set to perform the following day, but he couldn’t say a word.

If he shows up dead.

If he shows up dead.

Those words were resonating through his mind and all he could do was stand there, dumbstruck, as the world raged on around him and Jaeseon continued to berate Officer Choi.

Would this Daehwan guy really murder Baekhyun? Would he take that risk with such a well-known public figure? Or would Baekhyun’s status just make him more of a target? How was he supposed to know what went on in the mind of somebody so sick and twisted?

By the time he returned to his body, Sehun had hung up on Jaeseon, probably to protect him from being arrested for insulting a police officer, and Choi’s scepticism had only grown as a result.

“I’ll be honest with you,” he said once he’d finally sketched his last note. “It’s more than likely that Baekhyun-ssi just decided to go home with these guys. Lee Daehwan and Han Tak, right? I can look into them, I can check the bar’s CCTV footage but unless I have evidence to the contrary, there’s not a lot that I can do. Baekhyun-ssi is an adult. He can take care of himself. I can’t officially report him as missing until twenty-four hours have passed.”

“Are you kidding?” Jongin whispered, his head tilted to the side in the way it always did when he was so beyond horrified that he didn’t know what to do with himself. And with each infuriated question, the volume of his voice rose until he was practically screaming in Choi’s face.

“Are you fucking kidding me? You’re going to do nothing? Nothing? What the fuck is wrong with you? It’s your fucking job to find missing people! Well, my friend is missing and you need to find him! That’s what you need to do!”

If their manager hadn’t kept a restraining hand in the centre of his chest, Jongin may very well have attacked right then and there. And Jongdae wouldn’t blame him.

What good was the police force if they couldn’t actually search for somebody unless they’d been gone for twenty-four hours? Twenty-fours hours was too long.

Jongdae checked his watch.

7:55.

If the last time anyone had seen Baekhyun was 1am then that was already seven hours. Seven hours and they had to wait another seventeen before anyone would do anything? They couldn’t wait seventeen more hours. Baekhyun couldn’t wait seventeen more hours.

“Like I said,” Choi repeated calmly, pocketing his notebook and rising from his chair. Like he was about to leave. Their friend was gone and he was just going to leave. “I can check the surveillance footage at the bar, I can pay Lee Daehwan and Han Tak a visit and ask them a couple of questions but, other than that, my hands are tied.”

Fuck that. Fuck all of this. Fuck the yellow tape or whatever it was that kept this guy from doing his job. Fuck the rulebook and its stupid fucking footnotes. Fuck the police. Fuck this Daehwan dude.

“Fuck you,” Jongdae whispered before he could stop himself, eyes watering and teeth grinding beneath his jaw as he levelled Choi with the most withering glare he could muster. “Fuck you.”

Choi bowed, handed their manager a card with a number on it that they could call in the event something happened, and left the room.

And he took Baekhyun’s chances of survival along with him.

**00dys 07hrs 25min 06sec**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you want to happen. Let me know what you think will happen. Just let me know. It helps me figure out where I'm going with the story :)


	5. Added To The Clock

_Cold_

_I’m so cold_

_And it hurts so much_

_I want to close my eyes_

_But if I close my eyes I’ll die_

_I have to keep my eyes open_

_I have to stay awake_

_I don’t want to die like this_

_Someone will find me_

_I have to hold on_

_Even though it hurts_

_I have to hold on_

_I have to_

_I have_

_I_

Time was moving at an excruciatingly slow pace. Every second felt like an hour and every hour felt like a lifetime in which they were just sitting here, doing nothing, waiting for God knows what.

Jongin was exhausted. He hadn’t slept properly the previous night for the same reason that Sehun hadn’t: nerves. Usually, that wouldn’t be a problem. They’d do the soundcheck, run through the schedule and then he’d get to nap for a couple of hours before the show but there was no way that was happening today.

How could he sleep when Baekhyun still wasn’t home? How could he sleep when Baekhyun was out there somewhere? How could he sleep when Baekhyun could be bleeding to death in some lunatic’s basement while the police sat on their asses and refused to help?

Midday had come and gone already. That was another six hours added to the clock. So many things could happen in six hours. Baekhyun could have died. Baekhyun could have endured more pain. The people who were the ones inflicting the pain could have been caught.

But they hadn’t, and it was just another six hours added to the clock.

“I found him,” Chanyeol announced from the other side of the venue’s dressing room, shuffling onto the edge of his seat and clutching his phone in front of him.

And for a moment – just a moment – Jongin thought he meant Baekhyun.

“Lee Daehwan. Part-time lifeguard, part-time fisherman.”

“Part-time rapist,” Sehun muttered under his breath.

Jongin ignored him. Dwelling on the more terrifying aspects of their already terrifying situation just made him sick to his stomach and that wasn’t helping anybody.

So instead of responding, he sat up from where he’d been lying across the couch cushions in a desperate attempt to find some sense of relaxation, and turned to watch his hyung flicking through the Twitter account he’d searched up on his phone.

“He looks like your textbook douchebag,” Chanyeol continued, his brow furrowed in concentration and disgust. “Attends some kind of party every other day, drinks way too much, takes way too many selfies without his shirt on. His father owns a yacht and, apparently, that makes him ruler of the world.”

Jongin wished he could roll his eyes but his head was hurting too much. Their manager had tried to have them continue with practise as though they weren’t missing a crucial part of their group but Jongdae had shut that down straight away.

How could they possibly think about performing with everything that was going on right now? Just the thought of traversing across the stage and trying to ignore the great big glaring hole in their formation made his skin crawl.

So instead, they were here. Just … sitting. And waiting. For what, they didn’t know.

“Anything else about him?” Sehun cut in distractedly, glowering at the opposite wall as if he could burn through the plaster with his eyes. “Maybe his address? Where he lives?”

Jongin blanched at the sheer fury in his voice – almost like bloodlust – but it was Jongdae who addressed it.

“What are you going to do?” he questioned coldly. “Track him down? Beat information out of him? Take the law into your own hands? ‘Screw the cops. If they won’t do anything then I will’? Is that your mentality now, Sehun?”

“If that’s what gets hyung back.”

Jongdae sucked a frustrated breath in through his teeth, “Sehun –”

“We don’t know where he is!” Sehun shouted, springing up out of his chair and glaring down at his hyung’s locked jaw and narrowed eyes. “He could be dead right now! He could be lying in a pool of his own blood, praying that somebody finds him before it’s too late! Or he could be tied to this Daehwan guy’s bed while –”

“Sehun,” Jongin cut in. His gut was twisting, stomach rolling, breakfast threatening to shoot up his throat. He didn’t want to think about what the end of that sentence could have been. “Can you just stop?”

“No!” Sehun yelled back. “I’m not going to just stop! It’s my fault he’s out there! I could have stopped him from leaving or … I could have … I could have told Manager-nim what he was doing and then he never would have been there and we wouldn’t be having this conversation!”

The room was uncomfortably silent after that. Sehun seemed to be biting his own tongue in an attempt not to say anything else and his three hyungs were capable of nothing more than mulling over his words inside their heads.

It wasn’t Sehun’s fault that this had happened. There was no way he could have known what letting Baekhyun go would have meant for his future but there was no denying the facts.

If Sehun had said something, if Sehun had just told their management team, then maybe they wouldn’t all be sitting here right now, wondering if they’d seen their friend for the last time.

“We should call the others,” Jongin decided after the longest stretch of the most deafening silence. “Kyungsoo, Junmyeon-hyung, Minseok-hyung … Yixing-hyung. We should call them.”

They needed to be here, not just because they deserved to know what was going on but because dealing with this when there were only four of them was starting to drive them all insane.

Baekhyun had been the one to take over the role of leader in Junmyeon’s absence and, without him, they were floundering. They needed their hyungs like they needed air to breathe and it wasn’t fair to keep them in the dark when they would want to be here.

“I already tried that,” Jongdae sighed, raking his fingers through his hair and leaving ugly crevices in the unbrushed spikes. “Manager-nim said we can’t. Yixing-hyung has a schedule, Junmyeon-hyung’s still at the training centre and Kyungsoo and Minseok-hyung … Manager-nim said we can’t.”

It shouldn’t matter what ‘manager-nim’ said. Nothing about that man should matter right now because the only thing that _did_ matter was Baekhyun and Baekhyun was going to need all his friends around him once he came back to them.

Because he _would_ come back to them.

He didn’t have a choice.

“Fuck …” Chanyeol breathed, drawing the eyes of every person in the room as he continued to scroll through the article on his phone. “Jaeseon was right. Daehwan’s been accused of physical assault on three different occasions and sexual assault on … on eight. Male and female victims, all of whom mysteriously dropped the charges and refused to testify in court.”

Eight. _Eight._ This guy knew what he was doing and he knew how to cover it up afterwards. He had no fear, no conscience, no concept of remorse or human decency. He’d beaten people up, too.

Jongin didn’t think it was possible but things were actually getting worse. He wanted Baekhyun to suddenly throw open the doors with that big goofy smile on his face and announce that it had all been one huge misunderstanding.

“So where are we on that address?” Jongin ground out through his teeth, unaware of what he’d just said until the words had left his lips.

He wasn’t a violent person. At least, he hoped he wasn’t. He’d never had the opportunity to be one before. But if Daehwan walked past him right now, he wasn’t 100% sure that he would be able to control himself.

That man had done something to Baekhyun. He was sure of it. If the police couldn’t see what was right in front of them then they were as good as renouncing their authority. If they were refusing to do anything to help then what kind of judge would convict somebody who’d saved a life because they’d had no choice but to take matters into their own hands?

If it was for Baekhyun, Jongin would do anything. Go to jail, mutilate his career, maybe even kill a man. He would blow up the President. If it was for Baekhyun.

The door opened to reveal their manager’s solemn expression and Jongin had to suppress the urge to emit a snort of disgust. If this man was about to tell them to get back to practise then he wouldn’t be able to sit still any longer.

“I just got a call from Officer Choi.”

Unless it was for that.

“What did he say?” Jongdae choked, tugging Sehun back down onto the sofa and edging forwards with his eyes wide. “Did … Did he find something?”

The look on their manager’s face said it all. Disbelief. Fear. Uncertainty. He sank into the nearest chair and scrubbed a hand over his lined faced, fingers lingering over his eyes for several moments as though he was trying to prepare himself for what he was about to say.

Jongin’s blood felt like ice.

“The CCTV footage at the bar did show Baekhyun getting into a car with two people who match the description Jaeseon provided for Lee Daehwan and Han Tak.”

So they really had taken him. At least that much was confirmed. But there must have been something else if the furrow in their manager’s brow was anything to go by.

“Officer Choi went to their place of work to question them and they told him that … erm … that they drove him back at … 4am. However, the surveillance footage at the hotel doesn’t corroborate with their story so they’ve … been taken to the police station for questioning.”

Oh.

_Fuck._

They’d lied to the police. They’d _lied._ To the _police._ Regarding _Baekhyun’s_ whereabouts. If that wasn’t a bad sign then what was? What were they trying to cover up? And 4am? Jaeseon had said they’d left the bar at 1am. That was three hours of unaccounted-for time.

What had happened in those three hours?

Why would they say they’d dropped Baekhyun off if they hadn’t?

Would they really show up to work the day after they assaulted and potentially murdered somebody?

The police had them now but what did that mean for Baekhyun? Would they give up his location? Would they stay silent? Would they tell the officers where they’d left their victim or would they proclaim their innocence until the very end?

And if they did keep their mouths shut, how long would Baekhyun have to live?

“Hyung …” Jongin croaked, unaware of when his throat had closed up as he locked eyes with Jongdae. “Can you call them? Kyungsoo and Junmyeon-hyung and … Can you call them?”

Their manager said nothing.

“Yeah,” Jongdae whispered in response. “I’ll call them.”

**00dys 14hrs 01min 20sec**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you want to happen. Let me know what you think will happen. Just let me know. It helps me figure out where I'm going with the story and also motivates me to keep writing :)


	6. Admission Of Guilt

“Private Do Kyungsoo-ssi?”

That was how they told him. One minute he was joking around in the dorms with his unit and the next his commanding officer was standing in the doorway with his hands folded in front of him and a slip of paper pinned between his fingers.

Kyungsoo had seen people get those papers before. Those papers always meant the same thing: either somebody was dying or somebody was already dead.

That short walk he made from his chair to the hallway outside was like a walk to the gallows. One of his friends gave his shoulder a comforting squeeze as he passed and he could feel the sympathetic gazes burning into his back.

Everybody else knew what those papers meant, too.

“Who is it?” he stammered once the door was closed behind him and it was just the two of them standing in the silence of the corridor. “Who’s dead?”

“As far as I know, nobody,” his superior affirmed with a thin-lipped expression. “But one of your EXO members – Byun Baekhyun – has been confirmed missing in a suspected kidnapping case.”

That was how they told him. 

Within ten minutes, he was out of his military uniform and into his own clothes, sitting in the back of a taxi with his fingers curled in the material of his sweats and his eyes fixated on the seat in front of him.

He didn’t know what to think. He didn’t know what to expect. He wondered if Minseok had been called as well. Possibly Junmyeon, too, but that was less likely. He was still in the training centre and they rarely ever let anyone leave the training centre.

As of now, he knew nothing. Only that his best friend was nowhere to be found and that the police were involved, but that was enough to instil a sense of terror in him so profound that it snatched his breath and turned it stale.

He tumbled very ungraciously out of the taxi when it finally pulled up outside the precinct, nearly forgetting to toss a couple of bills in the driver’s direction such was the intensity of his desperation to get inside.

There came a point where he was too scared to bother worrying about how stupid he looked.

Minseok was already there, standing toe to toe with a tall man in a pinstriped suit and an NIS badge hooked over his belt. By the expression of irritation on his face and the way his hands were flapping around in wild gesticulation, the conversation wasn’t going very well.

“Are you telling me …” Kyungsoo caught as he closed the distance between them. “That you’ve been interrogating these guys for seven hours and so far you’ve got nothing?”

Kyungsoo reached out and rested a hand on his hyung’s shoulder, squeezing gently so as to alert the man to his presence, and Minseok stiffened before he identified the owner of that lone hand and seemed to melt into its contact.

They hadn’t seen each other in months but there wasn’t time for a sentimental reunion or a big bear hug. Not when one of their own was out there, possibly dying or already dead.

The NIS agent sighed, “I’m afraid that is the case but we are going to continue to question them and, eventually, they will give something up.”

He bowed to each of them, pivoted on his polished heel and marched away with his head held high and his shoulders back as if he hadn’t just burst Kyungsoo’s bubble of hope. The bubble of hope which had helped him convince himself that they would have something to tell him by the time he got here.

Apparently, he’d been wrong.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Minseok murmured under his breath, reaching up and scrubbing his hands over his face. “I can’t actually believe this is actually happening.”

“What _do_ you know?” Kyungsoo asked without meaning to sound so harsh and failing miserably. “I mean, what happened? I’m completely in the dark here.”

Minseok looked like he was about to break. Whenever he was stressed, he raked his fingers through his hair but with his military-style buzzcut, that wasn’t an option and so he seemed to have resorted to chewing on his lip until it bled.

Kyungsoo wished he could tell him to stop but he could barely find the composure to stay standing let alone try and comfort somebody when he himself was already spiralling.

“Apparently,” Minseok started, refusing to make eye contact with anything but the floor. “He went out for a drink with some of his friends from high school, got into a car with two complete strangers – one of whom has been indicted on eight counts of sexual assault, might I add – and never got back to the hotel.”

Whatever Kyungsoo had been expecting, this was worse.

“They’ve got the suspects in separate interrogation rooms but neither of them are admitting to anything. They just keep saying they dropped Baek off at the hotel and haven’t seen him since. The only reason the police can keep them here is because the CCTV footage doesn’t back up their story but, once the 72-hour holding time is up and unless they get a confession or find some solid proof that they did anything wrong, they have to let them go.”

Kyungsoo swallowed thickly, “But if the CCTV shows that they’re lying about dropping him off, isn’t that proof that they must be lying about other things as well?”

“It’s not enough,” Minseok dismissed with a suck of breath between his teeth. “The surveillance cameras have several blind spots so, logically, they could be telling the truth.”

And, logically, they could be lying.

“Where are the others?” Kyungsoo sighed after a moment. “How are they holding up?”

Minseok nodded towards the window on their left through which appeared to be some kind of lounge or common room. There was a coffee table, a couple of couches and a telephone resting innocently in its cradle.

The view was mostly obscured by the slats of the blind but Kyungsoo could still make out the shapes of his members.

Jongin was curled up on the couch, on his side with his hands between his knees and lips ever so slightly parted in the way they always were when he slept. Jongdae was sitting on the ground, back against the wall, arms folded atop his knees and face buried in the crook of his elbow.

Sehun and Chanyeol were on either side of the table, staring at the phone between them as though it could start ringing at any moment. Sehun’s arms were crossed on the sleek wooden surface, chin resting on top, but Chanyeol was upright and rigid and frozen.

“Have you spoken to them yet?”

“No,” Minseok mumbled shamefully. “They don’t even know I’m here yet.”

“Minseok-hyung?”

Well, they knew now.

Kyungsoo glanced over his shoulder and spotted Chanyeol standing in the doorway of their little lounge room, the skin around his eyes wrinkled from lack of sleep and the hair atop his head nothing more than an unbrushed birds’ nest.

“Hey, Yeol,” Minseok puffed out, stepping forwards to pull Chanyeol into a hug just as Sehun stumbled into Kyungsoo’s arms.

“Is Junmyeon-hyung coming, too?”

“I don’t know,” Kyungsoo whispered in his maknae’s ear as he rubbed his hand comforting up and down the boy’s spine. “If he can then he will but, just in case, don’t get your hopes up, okay?”

They drew apart, Sehun blinked, and the words came tumbling out of his mouth.

“It’s my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s my fault he’s missing, it’s my fault those people got to him and if they killed him – or if they hurt him and he ends up dying because we can’t find him – that’ll be my fault, too.”

Kyungsoo opened his mouth to provide some kind of meaningless comfort but he never got there. Even if he didn’t know why Sehun was suddenly proclaiming his guilt for something he couldn’t have possibly foreseen or prevented, he never got to tell him he was wrong.

Because Chanyeol’s back suddenly straightened, eyes widening ever so slightly and jaw bulging as he clenched his jaw. His gaze was locked on something over Kyungsoo’s head and when he spoke, his voice was more of a growl.

“Is that him?”

Kyungsoo whipped around, half expecting – _praying_ – to see Baekhyun walking through those doors but, instead, he found himself making eye contact with a solid wall of muscle who looked him up and down and had the nerve to fucking smirk.

Just behind him was a much slimmer figure with a much less arrogant expression but Kyungsoo’s sight was naturally drawn to the first guy. To his biceps, his jawline, the ugly hook in his nose and, of course, the upward twitch of his lips.

There was no doubt in his mind: this was the guy who’d taken Baekhyun.

The uniformed police officer beside him gestured towards the direction in which he wanted his charge to go and the suspect – _Lee Daehwan_ – made sure to shoot Kyungsoo a wink before he complied.

They weren’t even handcuffed.

“That’s him, isn’t it?” Chanyeol shouted in the direction of the officer that was acting more like Daehwan’s bodyguard than his prison guard. “That’s the fucking piece of shit rapist who knows where my friend is!”

Kyungsoo threw out an arm, needing to ensure his hyung stayed back but also incapable of taking his eyes off the amusement in Daehwan’s expression. His accomplice – _Han Tak_ – had his head resolutely bowed and his arms wrapped around himself, clearly uncomfortable at the attention he was getting, but his buddy showed no such humility.

Daehwan was enjoying this. He was enjoying their fear and their pain. He was enjoying the reaction they were giving him. It was sickening.

And, for Chanyeol, it was clearly too much.

“WHERE IS HE?” he roared, thwarting both Kyungsoo and Minseok’s attempts to restrain him as he threw himself at Daehwan with every intention of strangling the life out of him. “WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO TO HIM, YOU MOTHERFUCKER? WHERE IS HE? WHERE IS HE?”

Tak flinched so violently that he almost stumbled into the wall, still refusing to look up and tightening his protective grip on himself, but Daehwan once again proved himself to be the polar opposite.

“What you gonna do, man?” he provoked, spreading his arms in a come-and-get-me type gesture.

The grin on his face was maddening. With the police officers in front of him, keeping Chanyeol back with a warning hand in the centre of his chest, he knew he was protected and he was loving every minute of it.

Kyungsoo knew he should be helping to restrain Chanyeol before he got himself arrested but he was secretly hoping the boy would get at least one punch in. Just to smack that grin off Daehwan’s hideous face.

“TELL ME WHAT YOU DID TO HIM!”

“Oh, I did a lot.”

Kyungsoo’s breath froze in his chest. His knees shook and almost buckled. He would have been half a second away from spewing his guts all over the floor if it weren’t for the sheer strength of the paralysis that encased his body.

“And he enjoyed every second of it.”

“You son of a –”

Chanyeol abandoned his own snarling words in favour of shoving the police officer who blocked him aside and reaching for Daehwan’s throat.

Kyungsoo lurched forwards and latched onto his friend’s arm in an attempt to haul him away from a potential prison sentence but Chanyeol was barely even recognisable. He was like an animal, vicious and rabid and ferocious, and Kyungsoo couldn’t blame him.

“Stop it!” Minseok was yelling from the boy’s other side as more officers streamed from every direction to help. “You’re making things worse, Chanyeol! Now stop it!”

“They’re going to arrest you!” Kyungsoo added in desperation. “That won’t be helping Baekhyun-hyung!”

Tak and Daehwan were shunted through a door on the other side of the precinct and cut off from the rest of the world but it took another few seconds before Chanyeol stopped struggling against the people restraining him, officers and members alike.

“Stop it …” Kyungsoo found himself repeating on a breathless loop, barely audible even to himself. “Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.”

Chanyeol twisted away from the hands that held him and stormed back into the lounge, shoving past Jongdae and Jongin who had undoubtedly been awakened by the ruckus, and slamming the door thunderously behind him.

Through the window, Kyungsoo could see him throwing himself onto the couch and burying his face in his hands.

He hadn’t even realised he himself was out of breath.

“That …” Sehun stuttered, pointing towards the door through which their friend’s abductors had vanished and looking wildly at the officers and agents around him. “You heard that, right? He … He said he did it. He confessed. That’s … You have to arrest him now, right? He said he did it! He said …”

They knew what he’d said. They all knew exactly what he’d said. None of them would ever be able to forget what he’d said.

_I did a lot. And he enjoyed every second of it._

If that wasn’t a confession then Kyungsoo didn’t know what was. The bastard had gotten so riled up at the sight of Chanyeol’s fury that he’d practically signed his own arrest warrant.

So why was the NIS agent Minseok had been talking to earlier shaking his head?

“I’m sorry but we can’t. Now, it’s very late so I advise that you return to your hotel and come back tomorrow morn –”

“I’m sorry, what?” Minseok blanched, mouth practically falling open. “You’re not going to arrest them? He just said –”

“I am aware of what he said,” the agent interrupted impatiently. “But it was not an admission of guilt so, please, for your own sakes, go back to your hotel room, get some sleep and come back tomorrow.”

With that, he was gone. Like it was just another day at the office. Like somebody’s life wasn’t resting in the palm of his hands. Like he wasn’t refusing to admit that what they’d all just heard was the definition of an admission of guilt.

It didn’t make sense.

There was something they weren’t being told.

**00dys 21hrs 35min 15sec**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm curious; has anybody figured it out yet?


	7. Flipping The Switch

_The sun is coming up_

_That’s the second time since I’ve been here_

_It makes me smile_

_The night is so long_

_And cold_

_And dark_

_It’s harder to hold on in the dark_

_This can’t be how I die_

_This can’t be the end of my story_

_He can’t get away with this_

_I can’t let him do this to anyone else_

_But I’m so cold_

_If I let go no one would blame me_

_I’ve held on for so long already_

_I’ve waited for so long_

_I don’t think they’re coming_

_I don’t think I’m going to survive this_

_I can’t hold on much longer_

_And it’s just so cold_

Sometimes, in order to protect what belongs to them, a person has to turn into a monster. For the sake of their loved ones, that person has to switch off all emotion because, occasionally, emotions are what kill you.

Emotions are what kill the ones you care about.

The fact that nobody thought to tell him that one of his kids was missing until more than twenty-four hours had passed since anyone had last seen him was singularly the most outrageous, insulting and infuriating thing Junmyeon had faced in his entire career.

He understood that he was supposed to be focused on his training, on serving his country, but there came a point where his loyalty to his nation fell short at his loyalty to his members.

They permitted him three days’ leave and he didn’t waste time trying to negotiate. He was out of the door without bothering to change out of his military uniform and was storming into the police station with absolute certainty of what he was about to do.

Two NIS agents were standing in the centre of the precinct and he made a beeline straight for them, trying not to think about how serious the situation must be if they’d gotten the National Intelligence Service involved.

“Excuse me, sir,” he clipped curtly, right hand springing up into a salute as the men turned towards him. “My name is Kim Junmyeon. Are you the leading agent in Byun Baekhyun’s kidnapping case?”

Just saying the words out loud made him want to throw up but he forced it down. He forced everything down – all the anger and the terror and the urges to punch a wall – in favour of convincing these people to tell him what he needed to know.

He’d called Minseok on his way over here. He was aware of the chain of events that had led up to this catastrophe and he was also aware that the law enforcement was keeping something from them.

That was about to change.

“May I speak with you privately?” he requested as soon as the murmur of affirmation had left the NIS agent’s lips.

To his surprise, the man didn’t level him with a glare of irritation or dismiss him with an arrogant wave of his hand. He actually excused himself from the conversation with his partner and immediately led Junmyeon into an empty office.

It must have been the military uniform but Junmyeon couldn’t care less so long as he got to be treated like an equal instead of a hysterical family member, which was undoubtedly how the others had been feeling since this whole mess started.

“Detective Kim Hongjo.” His new acquaintance introduced himself with a firm handshake. “Forgive me if I’m wrong but you’re one of the EXO members?”

“Not right now,” Junmyeon snapped back. “I have no blood relation to the victim and, therefore, I am perfectly capable of maintaining the required level of professionalism to be included in this case. So – and please excuse my language, Sir – I would like to know what the fuck is going on.”

He had to do this. He had to convince himself that Baekhyun was just a faceless name that meant nothing to him because only then would he be able to bite his tongue and remain objective during these next few moments.

If he thought about his little brother out there, alone, afraid, hurting, pleading with heaven for somebody to find him, he would go crazy. And that would get them absolutely nowhere.

“I understand,” Kim nodded and Junmyeon inwardly bit back a sigh of relief. He wasn’t absolutely certain that his abruptness would work. “But I sincerely recommend that your fellow members remain unaware of certain … grittier details regarding Baekhyun’s case.”

This man took down serial killers. He was faced with paedophiles and axe-murderers and ritualistic cults on a daily basis and yet he was calling _Baekhyun’s_ case ‘gritty’. If that wasn’t a massive red flag than Junmyeon didn’t know what was.

“Agreed,” he hummed. “I have no intention of adding to their distress. I simply want to know the full picture.”

And thus began the worst twenty minutes of his life.

Kim gestured for him to take a seat on one of the leather couches against the wall and, although he’d rather stand, Junmyeon accepted the offer for fear that his legs would start trembling at some point.

And as soon as the agent opened his mouth, he understood why the others had been kept in the dark. If they knew … If they knew _anything_ of what Junmyeon learned in the small space between those four walls, they would lose their minds.

“We are interrogating the two suspects – Lee Daehwan and Han Tak – separately so as to ensure they cannot communicate with one another but it seems that they’d already corroborated their story before officers brought them into custody.”

Of course, they had. With eight independent sexual assault allegations, Daehwan would be well-versed in lying to the police. He’d gotten away with it before and he clearly believed he would get away with it again.

Junmyeon would cut off his right hand if it meant he wouldn’t.

“With criminals who work in pairs, there is usually a dominant personality and a submissive one. We staged an interaction between the suspects and your members so we could gauge the reactions it elicited and, from what we saw, we determined that Daehwan is the dominant and therefore he’s probably the one who calls all the shots. It also seems like he’s a sadist.”

A person had to be in order to do what this man had done.

“He takes pleasure in witnessing others’ pain. That doesn’t mean Tak is blameless but it’s more likely that he’s only doing what he’s told.”

Junmyeon just nodded along. He didn’t know what else he could do other than listen compliantly and provide information where he could. To him, it didn’t matter who led the operation so long as he got to hold Baekhyun in his arms as soon as possible.

“They both insist,” Kim continued solemnly. “That Baekhyun-ssi got into their car willingly and, from the CCTV footage at the bar, that part of their testimony seems to be true. There was no indication that Baekhyun-ssi was not acting of his own volition.”

Because he hadn’t known what was going to happen to him.

“They claim that they brought him – again, still willingly – to the docks and that the three of them took Tak’s fishing yacht out to sea. Allegedly, Baekhyun was the one who made the request to leave the shore.”

Junmyeon didn’t know what to make of that. Half of him wanted to believe that Baekhyun wouldn’t do something so stupid the night before a concert when it was already so late but the other half knew that Baekhyun had always loved the idea of sailing.

It was entirely possible that he had requested they take the boat out and, if he had, that would only make things worse. It would make it look like the entire thing had been his idea, his choice, his fault.

Was this how Daehwan had avoided jail time on eight separate occasions?

“According to the suspects …” It was coming. He could feel it. “They took Baekhyun to his hotel at 4am and then returned to their homes. They both showed up for work the following day a little late and reportedly hungover but their employer insists that isn’t out of the ordinary for them. However … I …”

So the agent from the National Intelligence Service was stuttering. That was a good sign. That was always a good sign. That didn’t mean anything at all.

Junmyeon didn’t know why but he was suddenly struck with the undeniably feeling that Baekhyun was dead. That his body had already showed up somewhere and the police were just holding off on revealing it until they could find some solid evidence on Daehwan and Tak.

But that wasn’t the case. And Junmyeon almost wished it was.

“Both Lee Daehwan and Han Tak admit to having … sexual intercourse with Baekhyun.”

It took everything in Junmyeon’s power to keep listening and not drift off into a world of dissociation where he was still at the training centre in his bed, waiting for the alarm to go off and for another day to start. Where Baekhyun was safe and preparing for the concert tour with the others.

“But they claim it was consensual.”

“It wasn’t,” Junmyeon spat, all self-restraint crumbling at the sheer audacity of that statement. “Baekhyun’s not gay and, even if he were, he would never sleep with one complete stranger, let alone two at the same time. If they’re saying it was consensual, they’re lying.”

He felt sick. He was going to be sick. He was actually about to throw up over this man’s shoes.

“I believe you, Junmyeon-ssi,” Kim assured him. “With Daehwan’s history and the fact that Baekhyun never made it back to the hotel, it’s too much of a coincidence. But we have no proof. We’ve checked them for defensive wounds and they have none.”

“So they held him down,” Junmyeon countered through the thick glob of phlegm in the back of his throat. “Or tied him up. Or drugged him. The fact that he couldn’t fight back doesn’t mean he wanted it.”

The images were flashing through his mind even before the words left his mouth. He was imagining the screams, the terror, the pleading, the tears. He could hear his little brother begging for mercy and it hurt like a knife between his ribs.

But he had to remain professional. He _had_ to. Or else Kim would shove him back out of that loop he’d only just managed to get in.

“There are no witnesses, no incriminating evidence, and the victim himself isn’t here to testify.”

“So find him!”

“We’re trying, Junmyeon-ssi.”

He was losing it. He was doing exactly what he’d promised both himself and Detective Kim that he wouldn’t. He was letting his emotions overpower him and he knew he shouldn’t but it was so goddamn hard when all he could think about was Baekhyun being …

So he did what Minseok called ‘flipping the switch’. It was an idol’s term for those moments when they had to pretend they weren’t exhausted or about to faint or on the verge of a panic attack or dying inside. It had saved each their jobs – and probably their lives, too – at some point in time.

He flipped the switch and, just like that, he wasn’t somebody who loved Baekhyun with every ounce of his heart and soul. He was just a regular person taking an interest in the criminal case that he was trying to help solve.

“What else do you know?”

Kim expelled a breath of air through his nose, as though deeply contemplating the pros and cons of revealing something, before he seemed to come to a conclusion and pushed up off the couch.

On the desk across the room was a cardboard box labelled _PERSONAL EFFECTS_ from which Kim procured a mobile phone that he unlocked with a swipe of his thumb and then handed to Junmyeon.

“This is Lee Daehwan’s phone,” he said grimly. “He gave us permission to search it and this is what we found.”

Junmyeon glanced down at the screen in front of him and blinked slowly as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. He scrolled through the pictures in Daehwan’s camera roll and clenched his jaw.

There were maybe six or seven of them, all dated the same night that Baekhyun went missing, and all containing the boy himself.

There was a selfie of him and two other guys that Junmyeon assumed were Tak and Daehwan. There was a photo of him standing on the pebbly shore, shoes in his hands as the waves washed over his ankles. Another of him perched on the bow of a yacht. Yet another of him sitting cross-legged on the deck with a bowl of peanuts in his lap.

And in each and every one, he was smiling. He was having fun. He was happy to be there.

Kim spoke up again but Junmyeon could barely hear him.

“You and I both know something happened that night that shouldn’t ever have to happen to anybody but with these,” He gestured towards the phone still clutched in his addressee’s hand and the pictures that it contained. “And the fact that we have no evidence these guys did anything illegal, if they decide to lawyer-up then there’s going to be very little we can do.”

Junmyeon understood what he was saying. The surveillance footage at the bar showed Baekhyun getting willingly into that car, the pictures on Daehwan’s phone held no trace that anything non-consensual had occurred. No tears, no hint of fear.

And that smile … Junmyeon knew that smile like the back of his hand. He would be able to tell if it was fake or forced and it wasn’t. It was 100% real.

They only had roughly another forty-eight hours before Daehwan and Tak would be walking free, possibly going back to wherever they’d left Baekhyun so they could finish the job if they hadn’t already.

He’d been raped.

He’d been raped by the both of them.

And if they didn’t find him in time, those twisted rapists were going to remain at large. Possibly forever.

**01dys 07hrs 00min 40sec**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keep me updated on what you think is happening. It helps motivate me and, you never know, someone might give me an idea on which direction to take this.


	8. What Do You Think?

“I can’t believe he would do this,” Jongin mumbled for the sixtieth time as he flicked through the photos from Daehwan’s phone that had been printed out onto sheets of shiny paper. “He should have come straight back to the hotel.”

He never should have left in the first place. That was all Minseok could think about but there wasn’t a chance in hell that saying something like that was going to help with their situation.

Baekhyun had been stupid, irresponsible and reckless but that didn’t mean he’d had any of this coming to him. Blaming him for leaving the hotel was one step away from blaming him for the entire catastrophe and that wasn’t fair.

“Daehwan must have known what they were going to do,” Junmyeon spoke up from across the precinct lounge where he was leaning against the wall with his arms folded and his jaw set. “He took those pictures as insurance to make sure that no one would believe Baek wasn’t there of his own free will.”

Minseok felt a shiver of disgust running down his spine at those words. Baekhyun’s grinning face was right in front of him, immortalised in coloured ink, and he couldn’t help but wonder if those moments had been the last of his life.

Obviously, whatever they’d done had occurred after the photographs had been taken or else Baekhyun wouldn’t be smiling, but how long was it before they pinned him down and stole that smile from his face? 

Minseok glanced warily over at Junmyeon who was yet to move since he’d returned from speaking with the NIS agent. Everybody else was mumbling bewildered questions and passing the pictures around, trying to make sense of the confusion, but their leader was like a statue: silent and still.

He knew something and yet he was keeping it to himself, probably under the misguided impression that he was protecting them from what he thought they couldn’t handle.

“Hang on.”

Minseok diverted his attention from Junmyeon and resettled it on Sehun, watching with apprehension as the youngest snatched one of the photos from Kyungsoo.

“What the hell …?”

By now, all eyes were on him, waiting for the moment he decided to share his little revelation with them but Sehun looked like he was completely detached from reality.

It wouldn’t surprise Minseok if he was. The kid hadn’t slept properly or swallowed anything other than coffee since Baekhyun had gone missing and none of them had taken up Detective Kim on his offer of driving them back to their hotel.

They couldn’t leave the police station. Their only source of information was here and being away from that – even if it was only a couple of blocks – would make the anxiety and the desperation so much worse.

Their manager had been the only one to choose a proper bed. He’d left for the hotel almost twelve hours ago and still hadn’t returned, most likely enjoying the lie-in and the room service.

A few of them had managed to take naps here and there, resting on each other’s shoulders or slumped on the floor against the wall, but no one was functioning nearly as efficiently as they should.

That was why Sehun needed Chanyeol to prompt him.

“Care to share, Sehun?”

“Here,” Sehun said, holding up the photo of Baekhyun sitting on the deck and pointing to something Minseok couldn’t quite see. “He’s got his phone.”

Everybody just blinked at him.

“So?”

“So …” Sehun mumbled, dropping the picture into his lap and wriggling his hand into his jeans’ back pocket. “If he had his phone with him when he went missing, how do I have it right here?”

Goosebumps pricked the skin of Minseok’s arms as he gazed at the device in his maknae’s hand. That was, indeed, Baekhyun’s phone. Only he would have a case with a gigantic golden retriever taped on the back.

“It was at the hotel,” Sehun continued. “Somebody handed it into reception. I thought Baekhyun-hyung must have dropped it while he was leaving but he had it on the boat.”

Then it clicked.

How had the phone gotten to the hotel when Baekhyun hadn't?

“He made it back,” Jongdae breathed, almost to himself, before he raised his head and repeated it louder. “He made it back to the hotel.”

Jongin was up and off the couch, spluttering something about telling Detective Kim, before Minseok had a chance to wrap his head around the sudden turn of events.

If Baekhyun had indeed gotten back to the hotel safely then why wasn’t he here right now? Did he return before or after Daehwan hurt him? At what point had he gone missing? Had someone taken him from the hotel itself or had he walked out of there on his own? And if it was the latter, why?

There were too many questions and nothing made sense. Everything was moving so fast and Minseok’s body was keeping up with it but his mind most certainly was not.

He couldn’t remember how he ended up in the car with Junmyeon, Jongin and Sehun or how much time passed before they got to the hotel or how quickly they made it into Baekhyun’s room. He just knew that he was constantly moving, doing whatever he had to do to figure out what the hell had happened to his little brother.

“Detective Kim will be here soon,” Jongin informed them the moment they stepped over the threshold. “He said not to touch anything just in case there’s any forensic evidence somewhere.”

Minseok mumbled his acknowledgement but he wasn’t really listening.

They’d left the rest of the members at the precinct and rushed over here without a second thought, needing to find some clue as to where Baekhyun had gone and why he would leave the safety of his room twice.

Junmyeon was downstairs with Detective Kim, trying to access the CCTV cameras.

“He didn’t sleep in the bed,” Sehun reported, gesturing towards the pristinely-made sheets that bore only a few wrinkles where somebody had seated themselves on top.

“He took something out of his suitcase,” Minseok added as he stared down at the large black container with its lid flipped open and its contents disturbed, as though somebody had been rummaging desperately through it.

But that could have been before he left for the bar.

“Hyung.”

Jongin’s voice was flat, completely void of all emotion, and that was what truly had alarm bells ringing in Minseok’s head as he followed the boy into the en suite bathroom.

Here was the real proof. The undeniable evidence of Baekhyun’s return to this room after whatever horrible experience he’d endured.

There was blood on the tiled floor. Not a lot, but enough. It was stamped in randomised spots across the room, spongy and smeared, as though somebody had stumbled around in circles with their feet sliced up.

There were a couple of dried drops on the toilet seat, too, and flaky clumps lodged between the plughole crevices in the sink. Whoever had been bleeding – and Minseok knew exactly who that was – they hadn’t bothered cleaning up after themselves.

Only these four walls knew why.

“These are hyung’s clothes.”

Minseok forced himself to look away from the scarlet smears on the floor of the shower and spotted Sehun crouching down beside a bundle of fabric. A white T-Shirt and a pair of black jeans.

“This is what he was wearing that night. Minus the hoodie.”

The garments were creased, discarded carelessly in the corner of the room, but Minseok could still see the fluid that had soaked through their fibres. Uneven tracks were inked vertically into the front of the shirt in a pattern consistent with that of a bleeding nose but it was the jeans that truly chilled Minseok’s breath.

Although they were black, he could make out the slightly darker patches that indicated the presence of bloodstains. He knew he shouldn’t touch them when there could be vital DNA clinging to the material but he couldn’t stop himself from reaching out and adjusting the pile.

His suspicions had been correct.

The largest spots of blood were located on the insides of the thighs.

“Get out,” he choked, straightening up and shoving both Sehun and Jongin ahead of him. “Both of you, get out now.”

He didn’t want them to see that. Even if they were aware that Baekhyun had been violated in that way, they didn’t need to observe the evidence for themselves. It would be too much for them, just like it was too much for Minseok.

He closed the bathroom door behind him and collapsed onto the edge of the bed, resting his elbows on his knees and scrubbing his face with his hands. He wished he had more than a couple of centimetres of hair to run his fingers through.

“That was a lot of blood,” Jongin muttered in disbelief. “Did they … Did they beat him up, too?”

Minseok didn’t want to think about it. His best friend had been hurt and in pain but instead of calling for help, he’d tried to deal with it alone. He’d tried to treat his own injuries and hide the aftermath of his torture from the rest of his group.

He must have felt so ashamed. Probably guilty as well. He would have believed he was bringing down the rest of them if he allowed himself to fall apart after what he’d been through.

They should have known. Someone should have properly searched this room earlier. Maybe then they would have found him by now.

It was unclear how long they sat there, trying not to think about their friend’s blood splattered across the floor like that, before the door finally opened and Detective Kim marched through, Junmyeon on his heels.

“Did you touch anything?”

“No,” Minseok deflected. He pushed himself off the bed and took Jongin’s elbow. “You need to look in the bathroom.”

He didn’t wait for the detective’s response before he herded all three of his members back out into the hallway so that he wouldn’t have to stand in that room for a second longer.

He expected Junmyeon to ask what was going on but the man was just as sphynx-like as before. Clearly, he had his own revelation to ponder. Minseok wanted to know what he’d seen on the CCTV cameras but he was too afraid to ask.

Now that he knew how much Baekhyun had been bleeding, he was too afraid to do anything.

“I should update the others,” Jongin announced at last. The uncomfortable stretch of silence must have been getting to him, too. “They’ll be worried.”

“And I should call the company,” Sehun chipped in, leaping on the bandwagon that Jongin had started to push.

The two of them excused themselves without another word, padding towards the elevator at the end of the hallway as though they wanted to put as much distance between themselves at Baekhyun’s hotel room as possible.

And then there were two.

“I saw the CCTV footage,” Junmyeon finally breathed out, seemingly unable to look at anything but the ugly burgundy carpet beneath their feet. “He got back here at 4:30am. The police didn’t realise at first because he wasn’t dropped off by a car and he wasn’t wearing the red hoodie he was last seen in. He had a black jacket instead.”

Minseok just nodded solemnly, leaning the majority of his weight against the wall behind him in an attempt to take the pressure off his trembling legs.

“There was blood in the bathroom,” he supplied. “His clothes, too.”

“How did the managers miss that?”

“It was all in the bathroom. He must’ve been worried about getting blood on the bed.” It was just like Baekhyun to be concerned about something so insignificant when the real problem was so much worse. “Junmyeon, they did one hell of a number on him.”

Junmyeon didn’t look shocked, “He was limping on the surveillance footage. He had a cap on so I couldn’t see his face but you could tell just from his posture that he was in pain.”

If Minseok wasn’t so sick with worry, he would probably be furious. He may even have run straight back to the precinct just to beat the living daylights out of those sick and twisted bastards in the interrogation rooms.

They’d hurt his boy. In more ways than one, they’d inflicted pain on his body and mind and they still had the nerve to claim that they were innocent. 

“The footage shows that he went down to the underground parking lot at 6:45am,” Junmyeon continued, oblivious to Minseok’s internal struggle. Or indifferent. Maybe both. “There are no cameras down there and he never came back up.”

So Baekhyun had spent just over two hours in that bathroom, trying to wash the blood down the drain along with the feeling of Daehwan and Tak’s hands on his body. And then he’d gotten up, barely fifteen minutes before his managers would have woken him anyway, and left the building?

“Why would he do that? If he was hurt, why would he leave?”

He looked across the hallway at Junmyeon and for the first time since they’d arrived here, their eyes locked. There was dread in Junmyeon’s face. A horrible kind of knowledgeable devastation.

“What?” Minseok croaked.

Only after Junmyeon finished speaking did he realise he hadn’t wanted to know.

“Both Daehwan and Tak admitted to having sex with Baek,” the leader whispered, voice cracked and eyes watering as he stared at his hyung without a single blink. “But they claim it was consensual. They took those pictures of him smiling so that, if they were caught, no one would believe they forced him to do anything.

They have no defensive wounds so that means Baek couldn’t fight them. I didn’t know why but if they beat him up, that would make sense. He might have gotten away but I doubt it so they probably let him go after they were finished. He got back here, tried to clean himself up and then he left again.”

Hearing somebody lay it out like that made it five hundred times more real and it snatched Minseok’s breath right from his lungs. He understood now why Junmyeon had neglected to share those precious few details.

“What do you think happened?” the leader whispered, but it wasn’t really a question.

“I … I don’t know,” Minseok stuttered. “Isn’t that the whole reason we’re here? Because we have no idea –”

“No,” Junmyeon interrupted, clearing his throat and swallowing his tears. “Think about it, hyung. They got what they wanted from him. They let him go so why would they take him back and why would he willingly go to meet them after what they did to him?”

Minseok wasn’t following.

“What if they’re telling the truth?” But they weren’t. “What if they truly don’t know where Baekhyun is?” 

No. They must. They had to. Because if they didn’t then … then …

“What if he left on his own because he was planning to kill himself?”

**01dys 15hrs 19min 09sec**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bet no one saw that coming, right? But worry not ... not everything is as it seems. Keep the theories and ideas coming in. They motivate me more than anything :)


	9. Pass A Polygraph

_I can’t_

_I can’t hold on anymore_

_I’m trying_

_But it’s_

_It’s too cold_

_They won’t find me_

_At least not while I’m still alive_

_I want people to know what happened_

_I don’t want to be overlooked_

_I don’t want him to get away with it_

_But he will_

_Because I can’t hold on anymore_

_I’m sorry_

Jongin wasn’t religious but in the last two days, he must have prayed to every deity anyone had ever believed in. He’d never been superstitious but he’d even looked up a couple of shamans, not because he was planning to see them but just because he was so desperate for something to do.

He’d never felt more useless.

He hadn’t left this room in over twenty-four hours despite how many times Detective Kim had tried to convince him to go back to the hotel for some proper rest. He was aware that they were probably being a nuisance to the police department by staying here but he didn’t care.

He couldn’t leave.

What if Baekhyun managed to find a phone and call for help but there was nobody there to listen? What if he made it to the station and there was nobody to hug him and tell him he was safe and take him to a hospital?

For as long as he lived, Jongin would never forget the sight of that bathroom and the blood that stained the tiles. As if sexually assaulting his hyung hadn’t been enough, those bastards had beaten him, too.

And then they must have found some way to lure him out of the hotel because there was no way he would have left on his own. Jongin didn’t care what Junmyeon said. There was no way Baekhyun would have killed himself.

Even if he was traumatised, even if he was hurting, even if he was scared that his career was over and that everybody would blame him because he’d gotten into that car and he’d been smiling in those photos and Daehwan had made it look like everything had been consensual.

Even with all of that, Baekhyun would never take his own life. Jongin didn’t believe – he refused to believe it – for a single second.

“We all know that he was hurt,” Detective Kim was saying, eagle-like eyes honing in on each one of them as he spoke. “No one can deny that but the suspects are still sticking to their stories. They say that if somebody beat him up, it wasn’t them, and we currently have no evidence to the contrary.”

It was beyond frustrating. How could there be nothing? No witnesses, no incriminating footage and two total creeps lying out of their asses.

“And even though the circumstances are certainly suspicious,” Kim continued with a sympathetic smile in Jongin’s direction, as if he could tell what he was thinking. “Baekhyun did leave the hotel on his own. We can continue to investigate the rape allegation, maybe the physical assault one, too, but murder or false imprisonment? That’s looking less likely.”

Jongin knew what he was going to say even before he said it.

“Unfortunately, the facts point to Baekhyun-ssi acting of his own free will. He might be hiding out somewhere because he’s afraid or ashamed, he might have collapsed somewhere due to his injuries … Those are all possibilities, but so is the theory that he may have been trying to end his own life. We’re in the process of checking mortuaries but …”

Jongin couldn’t listen anymore. His skin was crawling, his chest was tight and his stomach was aching with hunger but it didn’t even phase him when he stood up and started to feel dizzy.

He ploughed through it, reaching blindly for the door handle through the popping lights in front of his eyes and ignoring the half-hearted calls of his name as he stormed out of the lounge.

Daehwan and Tak were going to get away with this. They’d planned it out so perfectly. Maybe Baekhyun had been the intended target all along or maybe they were just so experienced in the art of kidnapping and rape that they worked like a well-oiled machine.

Either way, they’d made it so that once their seventy-two-hour holding time was up, they would walk free and probably laugh about this entire thing over a bottle of Soju.

They had something to do with Baekhyun’s disappearance. Jongin was sure of it. The only problem was that he had no way of proving it.

He didn’t stop walking until he made it onto the front steps of the building. Only then did he permit himself to sag onto the cold concrete that was damp from the night’s rainfall.

The sky was still a shade of deep royal blue, the first rays of pink and orange starting to peak over the horizon. He had started to lose track of when one day ended and another began and he hadn’t even realised they’d been up all night.

The sun would be coming up soon and yet it was still so cold. Baekhyun was out there somewhere. If he hadn’t found shelter then he would have been subjected to the rain as well as the biting wind and the plummeting temperatures.

Did he have access to food and water? Did he have enough warmth to keep himself alive until they found him? Had he treated his injuries? Had somebody taken pity on him and driven him to a hospital?

“Jongin, come back inside.”

“No,” was all he said. He didn’t even bother turning around to see who it was who’d been sent to retrieve him.

“It’s cold and you need to eat something.”

“You think Baekhyun-hyung has something to eat right now?” he spat viciously. “You think he gets the chance to ‘come back inside’ just because ‘it’s cold’?”

He heard the long exhale of exasperation before Kyungsoo was settling himself down at his side, tucking his feet as close to his body as he could in an attempt to preserve warmth.

“And you think punishing yourself is going to do anyone any good?”

Jongin sucked a breath in through his teeth, “I can’t sit in that room and listen to them turn his rescue into a recovery mission. He didn’t kill himself.”

“Jongin,” Kyungsoo murmured. “We don’t know what he went through. We don’t know what they did to him or what was going through his head afterwards. Plus, suicide is only one of the theories.”

“Well, it shouldn’t be.”

“But it is. And right now, you’re living in denial. The fact of the matter is, Baekhyun-hyung could quite possibly be dead right now. Even if he didn’t take his own life, he might have had a head injury or a punctured lung or internal bleeding. And if he is gone, it’s going to be a lot easier on you if you start trying to accept it now.”

Never. Jongin wouldn’t admit that Baekhyun was no longer walking this earth unless he saw the corpse himself. Until then, he would fight tooth and nail if that was what it took to ensure nobody gave up on this search.

It would do no good to continue to argue with Kyungsoo, though, so he shut his mouth and took his anger out on his teeth, grinding them together until he could taste blood on his tongue.

“They’re doing a polygraph test on Daehwan.”

That was what got him to finally break his silence.

“Polygraph?” he blanched, turning to stare at the boy beside him. “Like, a lie detector? Why?”

Kyungsoo shrugged, “Apparently, he’s the one who suggested it. Detective Kim said that it’s a bad sign, though. If he’s willing to take that risk then he must be confident that he’ll pass and, if this ever goes to court, his lawyer can use it in his favour.”

More bad news. It just didn’t stop. It was piling on top of them and threatening to crush them beneath its weight even as it continued to grow.

As badly as Jongin wanted to believe that Daehwan was digging his own grave by signing himself up for a forced confession, he knew that if the son of a bitch was cocky enough to volunteer himself for a lie detector then he would probably pass.

“Do you really think he’s dead?” he whispered hoarsely as his throat began to burn. “Do you really think it’s too late?”

There was a long stretch of silence in which Kyungsoo seemed to either be contemplating his answer or trying to get his own emotions under control but when he spoke, his voice was rock solid.

“I think it’s an outcome we should prepare ourselves for.”

Jongin allowed himself to blink – just one flicker of an eyelid – and somehow the floodgates took that miniscule movement as permission to open and release every last droplet of moisture that had been building up inside of him.

He buried his face in his hands and sobbed into his fingers without being able to stop himself. The tears just kept coming and not even the presence of Kyungsoo’s comforting hand between his shoulder blades was enough to soothe him.

He balled his hand into a fist, stuck it in his mouth and screamed into his knuckles.

“Stop that,” came the soft command just before Kyungsoo was grabbing his wrist. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

Jongin didn’t care anymore. He could bleed, he could die for all it mattered to him. Maybe he deserved to.

“We wanted a lie-in,” he choked.

“Sorry?”

“We wanted a lie-in,” Jongin repeated, raising his head and swallowing the globule of spit that had lodged itself in the back of his throat. “The managers wanted to get us up at 6:30 but we asked for an extra thirty minutes. We wanted an extra thirty minutes.”

He never would have believed their laziness would cost one of them their lives.

“If we hadn’t done that … If we’d just gotten up at 6:30 like we were supposed to then … then maybe we could have caught Baekhyun-hyung before he left. Maybe we could have helped him. And maybe then he would be here right now.”

For hours now, he’d been trying to think back to the last thing he’d said to his hyung before they retired to their respective rooms for the night, but he couldn’t remember.

It was probably something useless and generic, maybe even cruel. They had been teasing each other. Maybe he’d gone too far and now he would never get a chance to tell Baekhyun that he didn’t mean it and that he was sorry.

What if the fans blamed them for not stopping him?

“Have the company posted a statement?” he croaked, suddenly remembering the concert they had just abandoned. “Have they said anything about what’s happening?”

“No,” Kyungsoo assured him. “They’ve cancelled the tour for what they’re calling ‘health reasons’ but they haven’t said anything about Baekhyun-hyung. They’re waiting for the police to tell them what’s best to do.”

Jongin merely nodded. A shoot of guilt wriggled through his gut at the thought of all those fans having to miss out on the concert they’d paid so much money for but he was glad the explanation had been as vague as possible.

Baekhyun wouldn’t want anybody to know.

“Detective Kim says they might release a news report, though. There could be someone out there who saw something but, because of hyung’s public status, they’re worried people might abuse the opportunity and make stuff up.”

They would. Jongin could already see it now. Antis trying to sabotage the investigation, delusional fans pulling fake facts out of thin air as an excuse to get closer to their revered idols.

The world was sick that way.

He felt Kyungsoo shift a little closer to him until they were as closely pressed together as possible without sitting on one another, and patted his shoulder in an invitation for Jongin to lay his head on it.

Jongin was too tired to argue, having cried all of the defiance out of him, so he obediently leaned over until his face was nestled comfortably in his friend’s collar and he closed his eyes.

Maybe he fell asleep, maybe he didn’t, but the next thing he knew, a shadow fell over him and he sensed the presence of another person setting themselves down on the steps beside him.

His eyelids felt too heavy and he was too comfortable and he hadn’t gotten to spend time with Kyungsoo in so long that he just allowed himself to continue floating between the worlds of conscious and not.

“You’ve been out here a while,” the new voice – Jongdae – said. “I thought I’d come check on you.”

“Have they done the polygraph yet?” That was Kyungsoo. Jongin could feel his shoulder vibrating as he spoke.

“Yeah, they did.”

“And?”

“What do you think? The fucker passed.”

“Shit …”

Daehwan had passed. Daehwan had been telling the truth or, at least, what was his version of the truth. Maybe he’d figured out a way to cheat the lie detector, maybe he just believed what he was saying or …

“Kyungsoo, have you considered the possibility that maybe they didn’t do this?”

“Then who did?”

“I don’t know. I’m just saying, he passed the polygraph. That’s not an easy thing to do unless you’re telling the truth.”

Jongin’s subconscious must have realised he didn’t want to listen to this conversation because he could feel the tendrils of sleep returning to wrap themselves around his chest and drag him under.

“What did they even ask him?”

He perked up a little at that. Not enough to properly wake up but enough to know that he was interested to hear the answer.

“They asked him if he killed Baekhyun. He said ‘no’. They asked him if he knew where Baekhyun was. He said ‘no’. And they asked him if he met up with Baekhyun the morning afterwards. He said ‘no’.”

“Fuck me …” Kyungsoo cursed, and Jongin knew him well enough to know that he was resisting the urge to punch his thigh in frustration. Probably the only reason he succeeded was Jongin’s semi-conscious presence on his shoulder.

“I know. At this point, I have no fucking clue what happened that night.”

He wasn’t the only one.

**02dys 04hrs 18min 11sec**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know I love the theories so keep them coming :)


	10. Two Forces Of Evil

Minseok hadn’t slept in forty-eight hours, hadn’t eaten in twenty-four and, other than the trip to Baekhyun’s hotel room, he hadn’t left the police precinct since he’d arrived.

It was starting to get dark outside and the temperatures were due to drop below zero during the night. If Baekhyun was still out there – and, by some miracle, still alive – Minseok was fairly certain that he wouldn’t survive until morning.

It was too cold, he was too hurt and they were all too stupid to figure out where he was. 

Daehwan had been in custody for two days, had passed a lie detector test, was sticking resolutely to his undoubtedly made-up story and refusing to give in. There was only another twenty hours before the police had to release him.

Minseok rolled his head on his shoulders, wincing as his neck clicked loudly, and sagged back into the sofa cushions as though they could just absorb him into their leathery surface.

Jongdae was asleep beside him, feet in his lap and face covered by his arms. Sehun was sitting at the table by the wall, staring off into space and tapping his fingers absently against his thigh. Jongin had been in the bathroom for a worryingly long time. Kyungsoo was outside, talking on the phone with his military unit commander.

And Chanyeol was pacing the room like a caged animal, hands clasped over his mouth and eyes fixated on the floor in front of him as he muttered incoherent threats under his breath. He was about to snap and everybody could see it.

Minseok glanced back down at the photos in his hands and something caught his eye that, for whatever reason, he hadn’t noticed before.

One of the pictures was a selfie: Daehwan with his arm slung over Baekhyun’s shoulders and both of them grinning up at the camera as the stars glinted in the sky above them like little pinpricks of light.

He’d examined these a million times before and yet he’d never spotted Tak in the background, leaning on the railing of the yacht with a Soju bottle in his hand and an expression of infuriated distaste on his face as he glared at his companions' backs.

If Minseok had to guess, he would say that Tak looked jealous.

He supposed it wasn’t impossible. Daehwan was obviously the ringleader and he had the confidence and the arrogance that made him the centre of attention in every scenario. Tak was probably fed up of living in his shadow.

He’d gotten his way, though. In the end. He’d probably been the one to hold Baekhyun down while Daehwan did whatever he did and then he’d gotten to have his turn as well. It was physically sickening to think about.

It was literally sickening to think about.

Suddenly conscious of the nausea in his gut, Minseok set the photos aside, carefully moved Jongdae’s feet off his lap, and pushed off the couch. He expected at least one of the others to ask him where he was going but they were all too distracted by their own minds.

He was going to be sick.

Baekhyun was out there, dying or already dead after having been ripped apart by two complete strangers, and _Minseok_ was the one who was going to be sick.

What he hadn’t expected, though, was to run into Detective Kim and Junmyeon who were conversing in soft undertones and so quietly that it made it almost impossible for Minseok to hear any noise at all. But as soon as he saw them, he knew something had happened.

Junmyeon had that look on his face. The one that was almost exclusively reserved for those moments when the company was giving him grief.

“What’s going on?”

Both their heads shot up with comical speed but the apprehension in Junmyeon’s eyes dimmed as soon as he registered the source of the interruption. Minseok was fairly confident in saying that the leader was only willing to confide in him, probably since he was the eldest.

“Do you know something?”

He watched his leader’s gaze zip towards Detective Kim’s face before he let out a long breath and scrubbed his face so violently that he could have been trying to gouge his eyes out.

“You know the jacket that Baek was wearing when he got back to the hotel? The one that wasn’t his? The black one?”

Minseok nodded, wondering where this could possibly be going.

“They found it,” Junmyeon murmured. “In Tak’s apartment.”

Minseok could do nothing more than blink stupidly in response. His mind was whirring with a thousand different theories and yet none of them encompassed every single clue that they’d uncovered over the course of the investigation.

The dots were too far apart, too mismatched and unpredictable. It had been almost three days and no one had managed to even start connecting them.

“It may not be the same one he was wearing,” Kim continued grimly. “We’ve sent it for forensic analysis but that could take a couple of days.”

“We don’t have a couple of days,” Minseok declared with a hint of frustration slipping into his tone. “We don’t even have one day. Baek can’t stay out there much longer. It’s going to be dark soon and he can’t be alone for another night.”

The jacket. It wasn’t Baekhyun’s. They’d already known that. Baekhyun didn’t own a black jacket and yet he’d had it with him when he returned to the hotel. He’d also had it with him when he left and now it was in Tak’s apartment.

Minseok had completely forgotten that just a few minutes ago, he’d been convinced that he was about to vomit. Now the most prevalent – and unpleasant – symptom he was experiencing was a headache.

It was all too complicated.

“Just find him,” he begged. “I don’t care what you have to do. I don’t care if you have to bring in the fucking mafia. Just please – _please_ – find him before it gets dark.” 

He couldn’t take another night of this. Of not knowing, of waiting, of expecting someone to walk into the room at any moment and tell them that their best friend had been found dead. He couldn’t take another twelve hours of torture and he knew that Baekhyun couldn’t either.

“Chanyeol, what the fuck are you doing?”

And apparently, neither could Chanyeol.

Minseok lurched around, senses on the highest alert, to see Sehun and Jongdae both trying to restrain a positively irate Chanyeol. The fuse had finally reached its end, the pot had bubbled over, and Chanyeol was no longer in control of his own body.

“Let me go!” he roared, shoving Jongdae to the ground as easily as if he were made of paper. “I’m done with this shit! I’m fucking done!”

Sehun was a lot more robust, a lot stronger, but even he couldn’t calm his hyung on his own and Minseok found himself lunging forwards before anyone else could be thrown into the floor with unceremonious force.

Jongdae was scrambling back up, Junmyeon was already latching onto Chanyeol’s arm and Kyungsoo had come from somewhere but none of that seemed to matter now that their largest and strongest member had finally snapped.

“Stop this!” Minseok screamed, grabbing hold of Chanyeol’s face and forcing it down towards him. “Stop acting like a fucking lunatic!”

Oblivious to his words, Chanyeol thrust his elbow backwards and caught Junmyeon square in the gut, forcing the leader to relinquish his hold on the boy’s arm and double over in agony.

“I’m done waiting!”

“What are you going to do?” Minseok countered, transferring his grip to Chanyeol’s shoulders in an attempt to keep him from ploughing through him. “There’s nothing you _can_ do! Okay? We just have to hold on to …”

“Hold on?” Chanyeol shrieked, spittle flying off the tip of his tongue to hit Minseok in the face. “My best friend is missing and those people know where he is! Those people are the ones who left him there after whatever they did to him and you’re telling me to hold on?”

Minseok could understand his fury. He felt it, too. But freaking out, hurting his own members in a wild attempt to do whatever it was that he was trying to do, wasn’t going to help them find Baekhyun. It was only going to get him arrested.

He’d hoped that Chanyeol had gotten that message the first time he tried to kill Daehwan but the hours of sleep deprivation, starvation and incomparable stress had clearly eroded his common sense until there was nothing left.

“Chanyeol …” Detective Kim started sternly, and that was what probably did it.

Chanyeol erupted. He ripped his arms out of Kyungsoo and Jongdae’s grips, knocked Minseok aside as though he was nothing more than a rag doll and slammed his way through the door to the interrogation room.

“Shit …” Minseok hissed under his breath as he skidded after him.

If Chanyeol actually got his hands on Daehwan, he didn’t want to think about what would happen. That boy was not violent in the slightest but the past two days had twisted each of their personalities into something unrecognisable and now Minseok no longer knew what they were capable of. 

“You can’t be in here!” he heard one of the officers shouting just before he stumbled over the threshold and into the little square room with the one-way glass wall and the table in the centre.

Chanyeol had already wrestled Daehwan out of his chair and had him pinned against the wall with an arm across his throat and their faces barely an inch apart.

“Chanyeol, stop it!” Minseok yelled, curling his fingers in the back of his dongsaeng’s shirt and trying to pull him away to no avail. “You can’t do this! Chanyeol, stop!”

There was so much shouting and so many people trying to wrestle the two of them apart but still Minseok managed to hear the words that Chanyeol spat in Daehwan’s stupid smug little face.

“Is this what you did to him?” he growled, pushing his forearm further into Daehwan’s throat. “Huh? Did you choke him? Hold him down? Did you blot it out when he begged you to stop? Or did you laugh in his face and do it anyway?”

Daehwan’s eyes were wide and there was the slightest hint of fear as his face turned red and his hands scrabbled at Chanyeol’s arm but, still, he managed to twist his lips into a sadistic smirk.

“Oh, he begged,” he croaked, voice hoarse and eyes watering. “I took my sweet time and he liked it.”

Chanyeol’s fist came up and struck him across the face despite everyone’s best efforts to stop him. Daehwan’s head snapped to the side and a trickle of blood started to drip from his nostril but he didn’t stop grinning like a maniac.

Reinforcements arrived in the form of at least three more officers storming into the room. They forced Minseok aside and finally managed to get Chanyeol under control.

It took the combined effort of every single one of them but at last Minseok’s little brother was being wrestled out of the room, still shouting threats and curses over his shoulder as he went, and Minseok himself was left panting against the wall. 

“I’ll sue you all for this,” Daehwan spat as he wiped the blood from his face. “Keep him the hell away from me.”

“You, shut up,” Detective Kim shot at him with nothing but hatred and disgust in his voice. “As far as I’m concerned, this never happened.”

He turned his back on the suspect and fastened a grip on Minseok’s elbow, steering him towards the door through which Chanyeol’s screaming could still be heard and Daehwan chose to incorporate his own shouting into the mix.

“You wanna know why I haven’t asked for a lawyer yet, _Detective_? It’s because I haven’t done anything wrong! And from what I understand, you can only hold me for one more day!”

Kim slammed the door on him, drowning his taunts and effectively cutting Minseok off from the poison that seemed to bleed from that kid’s every pore.

“It’s all mind games,” Kim was saying to him, his hands on Minseok’s shoulders and his brows drawn together in the centre of his forehead. “Torturing you is how he gets his power. He’s trying to prove that he has nothing to hide but we will get him. He will slip up.”

“But he passed the polygraph,” Minseok mumbled, feeling strangely floaty and out of touch with the world around him. “He doesn’t know where he is.”

“He’s stalling. Both of them are. They’re just doing whatever they can to buy time until we have to let them go.”

Minseok swallowed, “What’s going to happen to Chanyeol?”

“Nothing,” Kim assured him. “I’ll sort it out. We’ll put him in a holding cell until he calms down and then we’ll let him off with a warning.”

It was better than Minseok had hoped. He’d been seriously worried that Chanyeol was going to be arrested, convicted and maybe even sent to jail for assault and battery, and so it was unbelievably relieving to hear that Kim was going to do none of those things.

“Try and get some rest. I’ll let you know as soon as something comes up.”

Minseok felt like a ghost. Or rather, he didn’t feel like anything. He was made of smoke, just drifting across the precinct to where Junmyeon was sitting in a chair, nursing his bruised abdomen, and Jongdae was absently massaging his shoulder.

Chanyeol hadn’t meant to hurt them. As soon as he came back to himself, he would probably feel inordinately guilty, but that didn’t make it any easier to see Kyungsoo’s grimace of pain and Sehun’s paralysing exhaustion.

Minseok knew Chanyeol and he would probably be afraid to touch them for a while. Maybe even look at them. He might even flinch every time one of them raised their voices. That was what usually happened when … when …

“Oh my God.”

The others looked up at him, curiosity winning over discomfort as they gaped at their eldest hyung’s slack expression.

“What?” Junmyeon questioned, a little breathlessly.

“Oh my God,” Minseok repeated under his breath. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”

His hands leapt to his hair, nails digging into his shaved scalp and fist pounding against the side of his skull as he tried to comprehend how – just _how –_ they could have all been so stupid.

“Hyung, what?”

It all made sense now. The pictures, the jacket, the polygraph, Daehwan’s choice of wording.

‘I did a lot’. ‘I took my sweet time’.

Not ‘ _we_ did a lot’. Not ‘ _we_ took _our_ sweet time’. I. Singular. Minseok understood that Daehwan was a narcissist but it was too coincidental not to hold any significance.

Daehwan believed that he was the only one who’d been with Baekhyun in _that_ way. Daehwan didn’t know that Tak had done it, too. That could only mean that Tak and Baekhyun had been alone together at some point, without Daehwan.

And that jacket had been found in Tak’s apartment and Tak hadn’t been smiling in a single one of those photos and Tak hadn’t taken the polygraph.

“Oh my God …”

“Minseok-hyung!” Kyungsoo shouted, seizing his friend by the shoulders and giving him a brutal shake. “What the fuck is going on?”

“Daehwan doesn’t know where Baek is,” Minseok gasped out as he gazed down at the smaller boy like what he was saying was the most obvious thing in the world. “Daehwan was telling the truth. He doesn’t know where he is.”

“We know that,” Kyungsoo snapped impatiently. “So what’s your point?”

They’d all been so blind. It had been staring them right in the face and none of them had bothered to consider the possibility because it had seemed too farfetched. Because one force of evil had been so much more malignant than the other.

“Daehwan didn’t do it.”

They were stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“Tak did.”

**02dys 18hrs 31min 16sec**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So who figured it out? And where do you think he is?


	11. Misjudged A Sidekick

_It’s not cold anymore_

Junmyeon wasn’t supposed to be in here. If anybody found out then Detective Kim could potentially get into a lot of trouble and he knew that if he put one toe out of line, he would be thrown out, but he wasn’t about to jeopardise this opportunity.

Kim had been their saving grace throughout the course of this investigation. He’d ensured that they were kept in the loop, that they were being told everything as soon as possible and also that they knew the police weren’t giving up until Baekhyun was found.

But he’d been honest with them, too.

The chance that Baekhyun was still breathing after this long … wasn’t good.

Through the one-way glass, Junmyeon could see Tak and Kim sitting on opposite sides of the table, the camera blinking in the corner to indicate the recording of their conversation.

The NIS agent was staring directly at the suspect without any sign of blinking but Tak couldn’t have been more withdrawn, hunched in on himself and fidgeting with his sleeves. Neither of them had spoken in roughly ten minutes.

His watch told him that it had been at least four hours since they’d come to the conclusion that Tak knew more than he was letting on but, still, no matter how intensely he was interrogated, the boy wouldn’t confess to anything.

They should have made the connection sooner and then they would have had more time to grill Tak for information but, as of now, there was less than half a day left in which they could hold him without an official charge.

His phone buzzed against his thigh for the fifth time in as many minutes and, seeing as Tak didn’t appear to be talking anytime soon, Junmyeon fished it out and finally permitted the caller the opportunity to speak to him.

“Hello?”

“Kim Junmyeon, what the actual fuck?”

Yixing? Oh. Shit. Yixing.

Somehow, with everything that he was dealing with, Yixing had slipped his mind. 

“Where is Baekhyun?”

He’d never sounded this angry before.

“Yixing,” Junmyeon sighed, turning away from the window and pinching the bridge of his nose to quell the migraine building up behind his eyes. “We don’t know. We haven’t stopped searching for –”

“Three days!” came the infuriated snap from the other end of the line. “I know, Junmyeon! Three fucking days in which you could have picked up the phone and fucking called to tell me that my best friend is missing! Instead I have to find out from the fucking news?”

Junmyeon glanced down at his watch and let a hiss escape from between his teeth. He’d completely forgotten that the 10 o’clock news had been due to release a report.

It had been subtle and vague without divulging the gritty details of the truth so as not to spread speculation and to protect Baekhyun’s dignity but the time for silence had come to an end. Even if it brought them more harm than good, at least they knew that they’d called for all the help that they could. 

Yixing shouldn’t have had to find out like that.

“Yixing, I’m sorry –”

“Save it,” Yixing practically growled. “I don’t want to hear any of your shitty excuses. I’m at the airport. I’ll be there in three hours and you’d better be ready to explain this whole fucking mess as soon as I see you.” 

There was a click, the line went dead and Junmyeon felt himself just deflate as he lowered his phone.

He truly hadn’t meant to keep Yixing in the dark. He’d wanted to call him and tell him what was going on but the managers had spewed some spiel about not disturbing their best artist while he was supposed to be working.

He probably would have spent several more minutes regretting his actions if Detective Kim hadn’t opened his mouth from the other side of the window.

“Where is he, Tak?”

“I don’t know,” the boy levelled in exactly the same tone he’d used for the last four hours.

“I think you do,” Kim countered instantly. “I think you and Daehwan decided you’d let him go too soon. You wanted him back. So you lured him out of his hotel room, down into the underground parking lot where you knew there weren’t any cameras and threw him in a car.”

“No,” Tak denied, still without looking up. “I didn’t do that.”

“You didn’t see him that morning?”

“No.”

“So the jacket that we found in your apartment – the jacket that looks very much like the one Baekhyun was wearing when he got back to his hotel room – we’re not going to find his DNA on it?”

Junmyeon could see Tak starting to shift uncomfortably in his seat. His breathing was speeding up, too, nostrils flaring with every forced inhalation. He’d been sitting there for almost three days straight. He must have been close to breaking.

“How did you get the jacket back, Tak?” Kim pushed. “If you didn’t see him after you and Daehwan abandoned him to make it back by himself then how did that jacket end up in your room?”

Tak was panicking. Junmyeon could see his eye movements becoming increasingly erratic and his nails were picking at the skin of his knuckles.

“Did Daehwan tell you to give him the jacket?” Kim continued to poke, clearly aware of his suspect’s impending spiral. “Did he, Tak? So that you could contact him the next morning and demand he give it back? Force him out of his hotel room under the pretence of simply returning some borrowed property and then snatching him away to continue what you started?”

Junmyeon’s skin was crawling at the thought of it. Baekhyun had already been through enough at the hands of these people before they’d decided they wanted more.

“Do you always do Daehwan’s dirty work?” he heard Kim say. “He’s the brains behind the operation and you’re just the one who carries it out. Is that right? You’re just his good little bitch, following along behind him?”

“No!” Tak snapped and, this time, there was real anger in his voice. Kim was getting somewhere by provoking him. “I … I’m not …”

“Not what? As stupid as Daehwan thinks you are?”

“I’m not stupid!” Tak finally looked up and Junmyeon could see the fury in his eyes. Flashing, blaring, dangerous. “And I’m nobody’s bitch!”

He had more strength than anyone had originally thought. Maybe that was why he’d managed to slip under the radar for so long. Everybody had perceived him to be just an accomplice but now Junmyeon was starting to wonder if he was capable of more.

Kim leant back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest, “See, I don’t think that’s true. You do everything that Daehwan tells you to and you don’t get anything in return. I mean, you didn’t even get to have your go with Baekhyun, did you?”

“Yes, I did!”

“Really? Well, we asked Daehwan and he said he was the only one who got to have the honours.”

“He wasn’t there!”

“Oh, he wasn’t there?” Kim nodded placatingly, playing his role to perfection. “So you and Baekhyun had some alone time together? Was that after you drew him out of his hotel room? What did you do, take him somewhere private?”

Junmyeon didn’t want to hear this. He didn’t want to think about Baekhyun in any of these situations but at the same time, he couldn’t walk away. He needed to know and he needed to know now.

Every spare second was borrowed time.

“Where’s the GPS tracker on your boat, Tak?”

Tak’s head shot up at the speed of light, “It fell in the water.”

“It fell in the water …” Kim repeated slowly. “That’s convenient, isn’t it? We have no idea where you went, no way of finding out where you might have taken Baekhyun. What was it? A couple of miles out to sea? Where no one could hear him scream for help?”

Junmyeon shuddered.

He was still trying to piece things together himself. If Tak had been the one to force Baekhyun down into the underground parking lot that morning and he had taken him back to the yacht, where was he now?

Was there some kind of island that nobody knew of where he could have dropped him off? Was he in a boatshed at the docks? Was he still on the boat itself?

“What happened, Tak?” Kim hissed, leaning forwards across the table. “Did he scream too loud? Make too much fuss? Fight too hard? Did you try to shut him up? Did you hit him a little too hard? Was he not enjoying it enough for you? Was that it? He bruised your fragile ego and so you had to make him pay?”

“Shut up!” Tak yelled, leaping out of his chair so violently that it clattered to the floor behind him. “I was kind to him! He owed me!”

Junmyeon could have thrown up right there on the spot if he wasn’t so invested in listening to the words being shared in front of him.

“And how did you figure that?” Kim shouted back, also getting to his feet so that he and Tak were on the same eye level. “You helped Daehwan abduct him, you stood by and watched as Daehwan beat him. As Daehwan _raped_ him. How was any of that kindness!”

“I gave him my jacket! I told him how to get back to the hotel! I did so much for him and he didn’t even have the decency to thank me!”

Junmyeon hadn’t realised how close he’d gotten to the window until his nose was almost touching the glass, hands braced on the sill and heart in his throat.

It felt like he was watching a movie, completely invisible to the characters on the other side of that glass. Kim knew he was there but Tak didn’t. Tak had no idea that his victim’s big brother was listening in to every word.

“So you were jealous?” Kim concluded. “You wanted what you deserved. And then what did you do, Tak? Where did you leave him after you were done with him?”

Tak seemed to know that he’d said way too much but he also seemed to have passed the point of caring. His fists were balled at his sides and he was glaring across the table with his chest rising and falling in short sharp gasps of fury.

Maybe he’d been wanting to say all of this for the last three days? Maybe he’d wanted to brag about how strong he was, how he didn’t need Daehwan to hold his hand, how he was perfectly capable of acting alone.

Maybe he’d finally grown tired of being treated like the sidekick.

If Junmyeon really was watching a movie then this would be the climax.

He watched as Tak’s lips curled into a smirk, too subtle to resemble Daehwan’s sadistic sneer, but too obvious to be ignored. ‘Submissive’, they’d called him. This was not a man who was submissive. Just one who’d pretended to be. 

“Even if he’s still alive, you’ll never find him.”

Every single one of them had grossly misjudged Han Tak.

Junmyeon was still in the dark but the light was there, creeping out from beneath the door frame and peeking in through the windows, tormenting him with its presence. So near yet so far away. He couldn’t grab it.

Kim did, though.

The detective’s facial muscles suddenly fell alarmingly slack, he kicked his chair aside and threw open the door.

For the briefest moment, Junmyeon had access to Tak. If he wanted to, he could have dived over that threshold, taken him by the throat and choked the life out of him right then and there. And, God, did he want to.

But he wanted Baekhyun more.

Kim slammed the door behind him, his phone already stapled to his ear as, through the one-way glass, Tak sat back down at the table and chuckled to himself.

“Detective?” Junmyeon asked tentatively, wanting to know what Kim knew that he didn’t. “What did that mean? Do you know where he left him?”

It was like he was invisible. Kim kept walking, ploughing into the precinct and shouting various orders to the officers around him and also to whoever was on the other end of the call. Junmyeon trailed behind him, still bewildered, but all he was left with were more questions.

“All units to the docks right now!” Kim demanded and instantly there was a flurry of movement as every cop scrambled to obey.

Docks. Baekhyun was still at the docks? The police had searched the docks. How hadn’t they found him? Tak said they wouldn’t, that it was impossible, so maybe he had a secret hiding place. Somewhere he … kept … people? It was too confusing.

“And patch me through to the coastguard. We have a potential casualty an unknown number of miles from Sambo point. I need a search & rescue team, paramedics and a helicopter all …”

Only then did it hit.

_Even if he’s still alive, you’ll never find him._

“Junmyeon-hyung?”

Jongin came out of nowhere, grabbing his leader’s elbow and preventing him from following Kim out the door. Everything was suddenly quiet, every officer having fled in pursuit of their commander, and that was probably why Junmyeon could hear his own heartbeat.

“Where are they going? Do they know where he is?”

No, they didn’t. But they had a vague idea.

_Even if he’s still alive, you’ll never find him._

“Get the others,” Junmyeon croaked, already resuming his stride even as he pushed Jongin towards the lounge where the others were probably busy gawping at the photographs and flicking through various theories in their heads. “Tell them to get to the docks.”

Who cared about the stupid photographs now? Who cared about the theories? Who cared about any of the whys and whens and whos and hows? Only one question mattered and it wasn’t any of those.

“Junmyeon, where --?” 

_You’ll never find him._

“He’s in the water.”

**02dys 22hrs 33min 23sec**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does it all make sense now? Or is it still a little confusing? Let me know so that I can be sure which questions have been answered and which haven't.


	12. Held On For Three Days

Cold didn’t even began to describe it.

The wind was whipping up a storm, buffeting their hair around their faces and attempting to tear their clothes from their shivering bodies. The sky was a thick inky black, not even the glint of a star or the ghostly glow of the moon and the air smelt like it was going to rain.

Even with the padded jackets they’d been provided with and the gloves that blanketed their quivering fingers, Chanyeol was fairly confident in saying that none of them could feel their feet.

Junmyeon and Kyungsoo were standing stock still at the shoreline, gazing out over the rippling waves that took it in turns to fight their way towards them while the others were huddled together a little further inland, trying to leech body warmth off of one another.

Chanyeol just paced, exactly like he’d done during those few short hours in the holding cell, hands tucked beneath his armpits and stones sliding over each other beneath his feet. He walked from one side of the bay to the other, back again and repeat. He couldn’t stop.

He needed to keep moving, not just to preserve his internal temperature but also so that he wouldn’t have to stay still and listen to his members discussing the possibility of finding their friend alive.

The harbour was illuminated by the headlights of the ambulance and police cars that were parked as close to the water as safety regulations would allow and the pebbled beach was swarming with officers, medics and the fishermen who’d just returned with their nightly catch.

It was so cold.

If Chanyeol was shivering this violently after only a couple of hours out here on dry land then how frozen would Baekhyun be feeling after a couple of days out there in the water? Was he even still alive enough to feel frozen?

Huffing a breath of restless frustration, Chanyeol pivoted on his heel and started back in the opposite direction for the umpteenth time. He could hear the hum of the rescue boat engine zipping across the water and the thundering hammer of helicopter blades above.

The chopper’s search light was scanning the ocean, a beam of brilliant white projected from the airborne machine into the waves below like some kind of alien spaceship.

Chanyeol wanted to be out there on that boat. He wanted to be the first one to touch Baekhyun, to pull him out of the water and hold him in his arms. If it was anybody else, if it was a stranger in a lifejacket, he would panic. He wouldn’t believe it when they told him he was safe.

He would believe Chanyeol, though.

“He’s a good swimmer,” Jongdae was saying as Chanyeol approached their little penguin huddle once more. “He’s always been a good swimmer.”

“It doesn’t matter if he is,” Sehun countered. “It doesn’t matter if he’s a goddamn Olympian. That’s still three days in the middle of the sea.”

Chanyeol sped up his pace, marching straight past them so that he wouldn’t have to hear the negativity in their discussion. He already knew the odds without listening to somebody spelling them out for him.

It hadn’t just been three days. It had been three nights, too. That was three lots of roughly twelve hours in which everything was completely dark and too cold to compare it to anything other than the arctic.

It had rained in the last three days as well. How terrifying would that be? Stuck in the middle of the ocean with no way of getting back to shore, surrounded by nothing but pitch black and buffeted left and right by choppy waves of salt water as the rain pummelled him from above.

Was it even possible to survive something like that? Even if he had managed to find something to cling onto or some way to stay afloat, surely the hypothermia would have killed him before he had the chance to drown.

Tak had wanted him gone – dead – and he might have done a good job of it, too. They couldn’t search the entire ocean. They had no way of knowing in which direction the yacht had gone.

Tak had needed to destroy the evidence of his crime and throwing Baekhyun overboard had been the most effective way to do so. 

The splutter of a motor engine rode its way across the wind towards them and Chanyeol glanced over his shoulder to see another search party gearing up a rescue boat at the end of the jetty.

He knew he wasn’t allowed to but he didn’t care. He wasn’t capable of standing on this beach and listening to the rest of his group condemn their friend to death without being able to do a single thing to help.

The jetty stretched out into the water, the end of it shrouded in shadow, but he used the bright white bulb on the bow of the boat to guide him over the smooth wooden slats as quickly as possible without losing his footing.

“Hey, you should be waiting on land,” one of the coastguards snapped as she saw him approaching. “Get back over there.”

“Make me,” Chanyeol growled back, easily side-stepping her smallish frame and boarding the bright orange vessel before anybody could stop him.

There were already two men at the motor, lifejackets crushing their torsos and neither looked particularly happy to see a stranger pirating their ship but every single one of them knew how time sensitive this search mission was.

“Put that on,” the female coastguard ordered as she climbed in behind him, shoving a lifejacket into his chest. “If you fall in and drown, we’re not responsible.”

“Fine by me.”

He pulled the inflatable over his head and tightened the straps around his ribs before thudding into the seat he was pushed towards. The only warning he got before the boat took off across the water was a tight-lipped “hold on”.

The speed was insane. They practically flew over the waves, sea salt spraying up in clouds of moistened mist and Chanyeol clutched at the back of the chair in front of him to stop himself from tumbling onto the floor of the boat.

He ducked his head down between his arms in an attempt to protect his face from the artillery of droplets but every time they hit a wave head-on, the entire ship was blasted at least three feet into the air before dropping back down with a splash only to do exactly the same thing five seconds later.

It was not an enjoyable experience but Chanyeol fought to keep his eyes up anyway. This was a search and if he wasn’t scouring the water for any sign of a body, he might as well have stayed back there on the beach.

Everything was so loud. The wind, the waves, the engine. If he screamed, he probably wouldn’t even be able to hear his own voice. It was so cold. Every splash of moisture that landed on his skin felt like ice. And it was so dark. He could barely see a thing beyond the first few feet in front of him.

How were they supposed to find Baekhyun like this? Was he even here? What if Tak had taken him to the other side of the bay and dropped him there? They could be looking in completely the wrong place.

“Where are you?” Chanyeol whispered into the wind, squinting through the sea spray and scanning the water ahead of him. “Where are you? Where are you?”

“Gyeol!” the coastguard beside him screamed, clearly addressing the man at the tiller. “Turn around! The chopper’s hovering!”

Chanyeol’s neck almost snapped from the speed with which he turned his head and, just like that, it felt like the heavens were opening. And it kind of looked like it, too.

The helicopter had stopped moving and was now sitting stationary in the sky, poised like a bird of prey with its search beacon fixed on a something tiny and unidentifiable bobbing about in the waves directly beneath it.

The boat did a complete U-Turn, pitching to one side so violently that Chanyeol was convinced they were going to capsize, but then they were on a straight path at more than double their original speed and, any minute now, that tiny blob was going to be right next to them.

Chanyeol was on the edge of his seat, heart hammering against his lifejacket, praying with everything he’d ever had that Baekhyun had managed to hold on long enough for them to finally find him.

By now, he could see that it was a buoy. It was small, triangular and tilting dangerously, a metal cage of mesh starting from the rounded inflatable at the bottom and stretching up roughly four feet to finish in a point at the top.

And there was a body, too.

“That’s him,” Chanyeol choked out, unsure if anyone could even hear him or if he could even hear himself. He was almost out of his seat already. “That’s him. That’s him. That’s him.”

Baekhyun wasn’t moving. His arms were locked around the metal caging, his head was down, his face obscured, and he was submerged up to his chest in the water. As they got closer, Chanyeol could see from the light of the boat that his hair and clothes were soaked through and he wasn’t even shivering.

The engine cut off and the boat hummed to a stop but they were still at least ten feet or so from their target. The coastguards were fumbling with rope and life rings but Chanyeol couldn’t wait another second.

He leapt out of his chair and into the sea, legs instantly cramping up from the astonishing temperatures. If it weren’t for his life jacket, he would have gone under and probably never come back up but, as it were, his head remained above the surface.

The cold was almost paralysing. His muscles were locked, his jaw was shuddering and he could already feel his lips turning blue but somehow, he managed to gather the strength to kick his legs and use his arms to drag himself forwards.

It was so dark.

“Baekhyun!” he gasped through lungs that were frozen solid as he finally closed the distance and latched onto the buoy. “Baekhyun, come on! Baekhyun, we gotta go!”

He still wasn’t moving. The buoy was groaning beneath their combined weight, in real danger of toppling over, and Baekhyun still wasn’t moving.

“Baek … Please ….”

He couldn’t be dead. He was right here. They’d found him. He couldn’t be dead now that they’d found him.

Chanyeol wrapped an arm around his waist and almost sobbed at just how _cold_ his body felt. He attempted to pull him back towards the boat but his arms were still snagged and tangled around the caging, fingers probably fused to his own skin, the only thing that was keeping him afloat.

“Baek, let go …” Chanyeol pleaded breathlessly as he tried to pry Baekhyun’s interlocked fingers apart. “You have to let go … Please, Baek, we have to go …”

He couldn’t be in the water much longer. Neither of them could. It was too cold and Baekhyun’s hands still wouldn’t break apart. It was like his body had just turned to concrete in some kind of insane survival mechanism, ensuring he couldn’t let go and sink beneath the surface.

Chanyeol couldn’t breathe. He was too cold.

“Baek, you can let go now …” he whispered, pulling himself right up against Baekhyun’s body and burying his nose in the boy’s sodden hair. “You don’t have to hold on anymore. Please, Baek, just let go now.”

He never found out whether Baekhyun heard him – consciously or subconsciously – or whether his body just decided that he’d waited long enough but the moment that Baekhyun’s arms slithered free of the metal caging, Chanyeol was there to catch him.

He was deadened weight, completely boneless and limp, his head lolling forwards until his chin touched his chest. Chanyeol didn’t want to think about what kind of condition he was in as he secured an iron-tight grip around his friend’s waist and started sculling back to the boat.

Every fibre of his being burned for release. He wanted to stop and take a rest or just give up entirely but then Baekhyun’s head fell back against his shoulder, he felt the sheer iciness of his skin, and he kept going.

It felt like he’d already spent hours in the water. It felt like he was never going to reach the boat. It felt like Baekhyun was going to die in his arms before he got there. It felt like he was already dragging a corpse through the sea. He couldn’t feel a heartbeat beneath his fingers.

Then his back met inflatable rubber and there were hands reaching down from above, securing solid vices on whichever parts of Baekhyun they could find and wrenching him free of the water.

Chanyeol clawed his way over the lip of the boat and tumbled onto the floor, gasping for air and frantically trying to massage the cramps from his legs.

Only then did it truly hit him.

They’d found Baekhyun.

He couldn’t feel a single one of his limbs and yet somehow, he managed to crawl towards the bundle of blankets in which resided his best friend. The coastguards were wrapping him in layer after layer after layer and Chanyeol would have added his own embrace to the pile if he wasn’t so cold and wet himself.

A thick carpet of wool was draped over his shoulders but he shrugged it off at once and layered it over Baekhyun. He needed it more with his bluish pallor and lifeless figure. He looked like every last ounce of colour had been sapped out of him.

“That was really stupid,” the female coastguard hissed at Chanyeol. “You should have waited for us.”

Chanyeol ignored her.

“He’s barely breathing,” her partner murmured from where he was stooped over Baekhyun’s body, tucking the blankets underneath him wherever he could to preserve as much heat as possible. “Gyeol, get us back to the docks.”

The guy beside the tiller threw a grunt of affirmation over his shoulder before the motor kicked back into life and the boat started moving. The journey wasn’t nearly as violent, the driver clearly taking greater care now that there was a critical patient onboard, but it was bumpy enough to be faintly nauseating.

Above their heads, the helicopter’s job was done and the sound of its blades was fading away into the darkness. Chanyeol made a mental note never to curse that sound again. It had saved Baekhyun’s life.

Or, at least, he hoped it had, but now that he was looking at the slab of pure white flesh in front of him, he wondered if Baekhyun would even make it back to shore, let alone to the hospital.

Three days. He held on for three days in the middle of the ocean. After being beaten and violated and who knew what else, he’d found the strength to keep himself afloat until he could swim to that buoy and hold on. For three days.

“You have to stay alive,” Chanyeol whispered through viciously chattering teeth, combing a quivering hand through Baekhyun’s salt-slicked hair. “You hear me? You have to stay alive. Even if you don’t have one bit of fight left in you, you have to stay alive. Just a little longer, okay? Just a little longer.”

He was still shivering. He couldn’t feel his fingers or his toes or his lips or his nose. He was drenched to the skin, his clothes were ten times heavier now that they were completely logged with water and he would have killed somebody for a hot shower.

But, for some reason, he didn’t mind.

Because if Baekhyun was strong enough to hold on for three days in the middle of the fucking ocean, he was strong enough to make it back to shore.

**03dys 02hrs 42min 14sec**

**You can stop the clock now**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments do wonders for my confidence and motivation so please, if you have a spare minute, let me know what you think and if there's anything you want me to include in Baek's recovery process.


	13. Critically Ghostly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So ... I'm British and therefore I use British units of measurement and British spelling. Sorry if that makes things harder to read but for me it's harder to write with American language.

Kyungsoo had never before seen somebody so pale.

Baekhyun’s skin wasn’t just white; it was practically luminescent. His lips were a deep purplish-blue colour as were the tips of his fingers and toes. He wasn’t wearing any shoes and his shirt was ripped at the collar, exposing the mouth-shaped bruises on his collarbones.

The blankets that the coastguards had bundled him in were already soaked through and so Kyungsoo helped the paramedics tear them from his friend’s body and deposit them on the floor.

He wasn’t exactly sure how he’d ended up being the one to climb into the ambulance with Baekhyun but the last thing he’d seen before the doors had been slammed closed was Minseok bundling a sopping wet and violently shivering Chanyeol in three separate layers.

The central heating system was blasting hot air in all directions so Kyungsoo didn’t think twice about shrugging off his coat and blanketing Baekhyun’s torso with it while the EMTs were faffing around with scissors.

They’d said something about cutting his clothes off but Kyungsoo wasn’t paying attention. The only thing he could focus on was holding Baekhyun’s head still and stroking the pads of his thumbs back and forth over the boy’s ice-cold cheeks.

“Stay with me …” he whispered, too quietly for anybody but Baekhyun to hear. If Baekhyun even _could_ hear. “Stay with me, hyung.”

One of the paramedics had cut away his waterlogged sweats and she was quick to hide his exposed legs with a fresh blanket but Kyungsoo still saw the bruises. The other medic was wrestling a mask over the patient’s face and hooking it up to a plastic tub of bubbling liquid.

Humidified oxygen.

They moved onto his shirt, slicing through the sodden material and leaving his sugary white skin on full display for several long seconds before they covered him back up again. There were more marks on his abdomen, blue and grey and green, as if he’d been kicked repeatedly in the gut.

His arms were the worst of it, though. They had to stay uncovered while the EMT fastened a blood pressure cuff around his bicep and drilled a needle into the crook of his elbow, and so there was no escaping the evidence of the abuse that had happened there.

Both wrists were stamped with purple handprints, probably from where somebody had grabbed him or pinned him down. The insides of his arms were bruised, too, but the patterns were different.

If Kyungsoo had to guess, he would say they were from clinging to the caging of the buoy for seventy-five straight hours.

“Okay, let’s go,” the EMT ordered solemnly as he added an extra layer of insulation to Baekhyun’s already-blanketed body. “You good to drive?”

His partner made a small noise of affirmation before promptly leaping out of the back doors and slamming them closed behind her. Kyungsoo could hear the sounds of her climbing into the cabin before the whole vehicle lurched into motion and the sirens started to wail above their heads.

The remaining medic attached one of those little rubber clips to Baekhyun’s bluish finger and various numbers started flashing up on the screen of the monitor that had been set up beside the stretcher.

Kyungsoo was not a doctor. He had nothing but the basics of first aid training. But even he could tell that a blood pressure of 69/37 was too low. As was a heart rate of 40bpm and an oxygen saturation level of 78%.

And even if he hadn’t known that, the way the paramedic cursed when he saw the results would have confirmed it for sure.

“Is he going to live?” Kyungsoo choked, still cradling Baekhyun’s sodden head in his hands from where he was sitting at the top of the gurney.

His first instinct was to ask if his friend was going to be okay, but he already knew the answer to that. After being raped, beaten up, kidnapped, raped again and then dumped in the sea and left for dead, there was no chance that Baekhyun was ever going to be okay again.

The EMT glanced up at him, aged face twisted into a grimace that did nothing for Kyungsoo’s confidence.

“He’s very sick,” the man relayed as he connected an IV bag to the catheter in Baekhyun’s arm and hung it above the stretcher. “But we’re going to get him to the hospital and the doctors there will do what they need to.”

It was a rehearsed speech. This guy wasn’t allowed to lie and say that Baekhyun was going to be fine and so he was regurgitating the same line that had been drilled into his script since he was appointed his job.

If he believed his patient was about to die, he wouldn’t dare say so, so what was to stop Kyungsoo from believing that Baekhyun wouldn’t live to see the next Christmas? With a heartrate of 40 and lungs that were only inflating every twelve seconds or so, it wasn’t looking good.

He retracted his hands and watched the medic feeling around Baekhyun’s skull for any sign of lumps or wounds but he put them right back as soon as the professional moved on to his neck.

He hadn’t noticed before that there were long slender fingerprints burned into the skin over his friend’s windpipe. They had choked him after all.

It ignited a kind of fire in Kyungsoo’s gut that would have had him punching a wall if he wasn’t so intent on combing Baekhyun’s hair out of his ghostly face.

The EMT muttered something under his breath, pushing his thumbs into the bruised spots before reaching for a clipboard and scribbling something down. His touch continued travelling downwards, passing Baekhyun’s chest, his abdomen and then his hips in search of further injury.

Kyungsoo was just thankful – somewhat – that Baekhyun was unconscious. He couldn’t imagine how frightening it would be if he was awake right now. Confused, cold and with a complete stranger running their unwanted hands over his violated body.

Only when the inventory was finished did the paramedic take his temperature.

“Damn …”

“What?” Kyungsoo asked sharply, already preparing himself for a number that was far too low for any human to be able to survive that. “How low is it?”

He looked at the thermometer that had just been extracted from his friend’s ear and felt an icy pit of dread sinking into the depths of his stomach. Then he just felt guilty that he was using such an analogy when Baekhyun was literally freezing.

At 27°C.

Twenty-seven. Two-seven. A whole ten degrees lower than it should have been.

Kyungsoo vaguely remembered reading a first aid manual that included a section on hypothermia and from what he could recall, if the core temperature was below 28°, the condition was life-threateningly critical.

When the coastguards had pulled Baekhyun out of the sea, Kyungsoo had managed to convince himself that everything was going to be okay. That they would get him to a hospital, get him treated, he would wake up and they would get him the help that he needed.

But now it was truly hitting him with the force of a speeding train: Even though they had him back and he was safe, Baekhyun could still die.

The ambulance screeched to a stop and Kyungsoo scrambled to his feet so he was in a more advantageous position to help the EMT and his partner transfer the gurney out of the vehicle and into the loading bay.

The emergency medical team was already waiting for them, gloves and stethoscopes at the ready. They fastened their latex-coated fingers around the safety bars of the stretcher and started running, the medics shouting various slogans and jargons over the sound of pounding feet.

It was all Kyungsoo could do to keep up as they burst through the doors and into the emergency department.

“Byun Baekhyun, 28. Partially submerged in sea water for approximately seventy-two hours following an assault of both a physical and sexual nature. Primary survey revealed trauma to the chest, abdomen, thighs and throat. Pulse is 40. BP: 69/37. O₂: 78%. Resp. rate: 5. Temp: 27°C and GCS: 6. Warmed saline administered intravenously en route.”

They manoeuvred the gurney until it lay horizontal to one of the beds and Kyungsoo stood back to let them each fasten a grip on the sheet that Baekhyun was laid out on.

“Gently now,” the leading doctor commanded. “If he gets jolted too much, he’ll arrest. On three. One. Two. Three.”

They transferred him onto the bed while Kyungsoo was still processing what the doctor had just said and the paramedics were already leaving the room and taking the stretcher with them by the time he came back to himself.

Baekhyun was currently in a state so fragile that simply moving him could trigger his heart to stop altogether.

One nurse was sticking electrodes to his chest and stomach and hooking the leads up to one of the many, many machines that surrounded the bed, making sure to cover him back up with the blankets once they were done.

Another was sticking a catheter into his elbow, adding to the one that was already inserted in his other arm, and connecting it to yet another bag of clear fluid that Kyungsoo assumed was this warm saline they’d mentioned.

A third was doing the same with the inside of Baekhyun’s thigh but Kyungsoo didn’t watch her. He wanted to preserve as much of his hyung’s dignity as was possible. By the time she was done, there were three separate IV bags pumping fluid into the patient’s veins.

Kyungsoo just hoped it would be enough.

“Isotonic crystalloid warmed to 42°C,” the nurse volleyed off to the room at large. “Administering at a rate of one litre per hour.”

“1mg of ceftriaxone going in,” somebody else said as they pushed up at the plunger in the syringe they were holding.

Kyungsoo was aware that he would probably be getting in the way and, as a result, would be asked to leave, but he didn’t care. Even if it was only for a split second, he wanted to be as close to Baekhyun as possible.

He resumed his position at the head of the bed, squeezing himself as close to the gurney as possible so that there was still room for people to move around between him and the wall behind. He ran his fingers through Baekhyun’s drying hair and had to resist the urge to start crying.

There was so much trauma. So many bruises. A doctor was pressing down on his patient’s blackened ribs and muttering something about suspected fractures before glancing up at the heart monitor and grunting the words “atrial fibrillation”, “severe bradypnea” and “decreased breath sounds and chest movements”.

 _Stay with me,_ Kyungsoo found himself repeating in his head as he watched the systematic carnage play out in front of him. _Just stay with me. You’re safe now. No one’s ever going to hurt you again. These people are helping so just stay with me while they get you better._

He was momentarily shunted aside so another nurse could remove the oxygen mask and hold up some kind of scanning contraption so that his colleague could insert a very thin and slender tube down Baekhyun’s airway. Kyungsoo soon identified it as some kind of internal thermometer as the machine it was attached to started conveying temperatures.

“Oesophageal probe in place. Internal core at 26.8°C.”

The oxygen mask went back over the patient’s face, the tiny tube poking out from beneath it, and Kyungsoo tried not to think about how uncomfortable it would be to have something shoved down his throat while he couldn’t reach up to pull it out.

“Can we get a portable X-Ray down here? I want to make sure there are no internal contusions.”

“Hey.”

Kyungsoo glanced up as a surprisingly soft voice sounded from just beside his ear to see an elderly nurse smiling at him as she fiddled with a couple of ECG leads.

“We’re doing everything we can, okay? He’s holding on. The atrial fibrillation is normal in hypothermia patients and once he starts heating up, his breathing will get better.”

He could never put into words how much he appreciated that small gesture of comfort amid all the chaos and the terror. Everything seemed so frantic and panicked and yet this woman had taken the time to assure him that they weren’t prepared to let Baekhyun go.

“We’re just working on getting him a little warmer,” she continued as she worked, gesturing towards the large inflatable covering with the heat waves emanating off of it that they were covering Baekhyun with. “This is a Bair Hugger. It’s going to help us raise his temperature and then we can work on the other stuff, okay?”

Kyungsoo just nodded dumbly, glancing back down at Baekhyun’s colourless face and wiping a stray water droplet from his cheek. He had to push aside the idea that it was a tear because if he thought about Baekhyun crying right now, he would shatter.

He couldn’t remember a time when he’d ever felt so useless. 

The medical team seemed to finally relax, some of them taking a step back from the gurney and wiping their brows while others busied themselves with making useless adjustments to all the tubes and wires that were protruding from their patient’s body.

They appeared to have reached a point where there was very little left that they could do.

“Alright,” the leading doctor sighed as he removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose in a signal of exhaustion. “Let’s run bloods for FBC’s, U’s and E’s, LFT’s, an arterial blood gas, clotting studies and serum toxicology screening. When the portable X-Ray arrives, we’ll run a scan of the chest and head.”

None of it made any sense. And not just the medical jargon.

It didn’t make sense that Baekhyun would be the one to have to go through all of this. It didn’t make sense that Daehwan and Tak had thought it was okay to hurt another human being like this. It didn’t make sense that the world was cruel enough to allow any of this to occur.

They were extracting blood from his body as if he could afford to lose a single drop.

None of it made sense.

The room was clearing out, the superiors returning to other patients while only a couple of nurses and a few junior doctors stayed behind to monitor the boy’s condition as the fluids in his veins and the gas in his mask and the insulting layers on top of him all worked together to raise his temperature.

It was maybe another five minutes or so before Sehun arrived, drastically out of breath and looking as if he was about to burst into tears as soon as he laid eyes on the boy in the bed whose blue-tinted hand was enclosed in both of Kyungsoo’s.

“Oh my God …”

It was quite a sight to take in. Baekhyun was barely visible beneath all the monitors that were attached to him and the few parts of him that were accessible to visualise were colourless and corpse-like.

Kyungsoo had been watching the temperature monitor like a hawk and the number was yet to rise above 27. He wasn’t getting any warmer and he was still breathing like an eighty-year-old smoker.

“I did this,” Sehun stuttered as he stumbled forwards, staring down at Baekhyun with his eyes blown wide in shock. “I can’t believe I did this.”

“You didn’t do shit,” Kyungsoo snapped back.

He knew it was cruel and harsh but he was tired, he was worried sick and he’d had enough of everybody blaming themselves. It wasn’t going to help Baekhyun’s condition stabilise now and it certainly wasn’t going to help his emotional state when he woke up.

Because he _would_ wake up.

“Daehwan and Tak did this,” Kyungsoo pushed on with a careful squeeze of Baekhyun’s hand. He’d been told to be gentle or else he could trigger a blood clot or something equally bad. “They’re the ones we should blame.”

He looked up and caught Sehun’s eye.

“You didn’t do this.”

But he knew it didn’t really matter. Every single one of them would forever loathe themselves for not being there when Baekhyun had needed them most. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this chapter may be kinda hard to understand but I'm really interested in medicine and I love writing about it so creating stuff like this is really fun for me even if it's not 100% accurate. Please let me know if there's anything you want me to add into the upcoming chapters.
> 
> (And before anybody asks, Yixing will appear in the next chapter)


	14. Just Aren't Words

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please pray for Lebanon and donate if you have the ability to

Sometimes there just aren’t words.

There are millions of them in each language, trillions in the world, and yet none of them could truly represent the feeling Yixing experienced when he glanced up at the news and saw his little brother’s face grinning back at him just below the words _‘KPOP SINGER STILL MISSING’._

At first, he’d thought it was a prank. Then he’d thought it was a mistake. Then he’d picked up the phone, called Baekhyun and had listened to his answering machine blurting out a scripted message.

Only when he finally got through to Junmyeon did it actually sink in: this was really happening.

He’d gone straight to the airport and was already halfway through customs when his manager caught up with him. They’d had a lengthy and shamelessly public screaming fit in which security had needed to get involved just to stop them from punching each other.

Apparently, it was Yixing’s duty to ‘represent and support the company financially in this moment of uncertainty’ but he wasn’t listening to a word of it.

With two gigantic and thoroughly irritated security guards preparing to tackle his manager if he tried to lay a hand on him, he pushed his way through the barriers and boarded the plane without another word.

And now he was here, gaping blankly at Junmyeon’s shrivelled figure slumped in a chair by the wall of the emergency room corridor. He had his head in his hands and looked like he was about ready to liquify there and then.

Yixing’s voice cracked.

“Junmyeon?”

His leader’s head shot up and Yixing saw the moment that the emotion in his eyes went from apprehension and alertness to dread and exhaustion.

“Yixing,” he breathed, scrubbing his hands over his face and hauling himself out of his seat. “If you’re going to yell at me, can you at least wait until tomorrow? I’m not sure I can handle it right now.”

He certainly didn’t look as if he could, and Yixing’s stomach twisted with guilt. He knew he’d been unnecessarily blunt over the phone but that was just because he’d been terrified out of his mind.

“I’m not going to yell at you,” he breathed as he moved forwards to wrap Junmyeon in his arms.

For a split second, the leader stiffened, as though the action was the very last thing he’d expected, but then he sagged against Yixing’s chest, buried his face in the boy’s shoulder and brought his hands up to return the embrace.

“Are you okay?” he whispered, words a little muffled. “This must have been hell for you.”

He was right. Yixing had been sitting in that airplane seat, tapping against his thighs and bouncing his legs on the balls of his feet as he glared at the clock above his head and tried to will time to go faster.

But none of that could compare to what the last three days would have been like for Junmyeon.

They pulled apart and Yixing glanced over his friend’s shoulder at the window through which he could just about make out a bed with a body lying on top and two people standing on either side.

“How is he?” he whispered hoarsely, unsure whether or not he wanted the truth or a sugar-coated version of it. “Has he woken up yet?”

“No.” Junmyeon shook his head as he turned around to see what Yixing was seeing: a whole lot of motionless nothing. “They did this procedure thing called a peritoneal … lozenge … or something. Basically, they pumped his stomach with warm fluids and now they’re waiting for his temperature to go up before they drained it out again.”

Yixing wasn’t sure exactly what that method of treatment would be called although he was fairly certain that it wasn’t a ‘peritoneal lozenge’, but he wasn’t about to laugh at Junmyeon’s lack of understanding when the subject of the joke was Baekhyun’s health.

He wanted to ask how this had been allowed to happen. Why was he even permitted to leave the hotel in the first place? Why did it take so long for anybody to realise he was missing? Why didn’t they find him sooner?

But he was painfully aware of how resigned and defeated Junmyeon was feeling and grilling him for information that he didn’t have wasn’t going to help with any of that. So, instead, he avoided the topic altogether and asked, “Where are the others?”

“Kyungsoo and Sehun haven’t left his side since he got here,” Junmyeon provided, gesturing towards the two figures keeping watch over Baekhyun’s bed on the other side of the door. “Minseok-hyung’s on the phone with the managers trying to figure out what we’re going to say to the press.”

Yet another thing they shouldn’t have to deal with. The news outlets and the fans should just leave them alone to care for their own and learn how they were supposed to deal with this.

“Chanyeol was in the water for a couple of minutes, too, so Jongdae took him back to the hotel for a hot shower and a change of clothes, and Jongin went with them to pack a bag for Baekhyun.”

Yixing looked at him. The bruises under his eyes were darker than the night sky and maybe it was his newly shortened hair, but his entire demeanour just seemed … younger. Less equipped to handle a situation as stressful as this one.

“When was the last time you slept?” Yixing asked him.

He didn’t even need to hear the response. He could see it in Junmyeon’s face. That boy probably hadn’t closed his eyes since he’d found out Baekhyun was gone.

“I’m going to go in there,” Yixing declared, nodding towards the door in front of them. “And I’m not prepared to leave anytime soon so I’ll take care of everything. You don’t need to worry about it anymore. Go to the hotel and get some sleep.”

He was already prepared for the spluttered protest of, “But …”, holding up a hand to instantly silence any and all attempts at objection.

“Go to the hotel and get some sleep.”

It was a testament to just how tired Junmyeon was that he didn’t try harder to complain. Yixing would have followed him all the way to his awaiting bed just to make sure he got there safely if he weren’t so desperate to get into that room.

He couldn’t see even an inch of Baekhyun underneath the big fluffy white blankets that covered him from chin to toe, humming softly and emanating heat in radiated waves. He had a thick green contraption clinging to the underside of his nose that seemed to be filtering humidified air into his lungs.

There was a tiny tube poking out of his mouth that connected to a machine upon which his temperature was broadcasted at 29.8°C, and his face was splattered with bruises that stood out even starker against the sugary white of his skin.

Sehun was in the chair beside the bed, hand resting on Baekhyun’s thigh and thumb rubbing back and forth over the silky tufts of the blanket whereas Kyungsoo was still standing, completely motionless, clinging to his hyung’s fingers and staring unblinkingly at his face.

The only person who even noticed that Yixing had entered the room was the plump little nurse bustling about her patient’s many machines.

“Hi, guys.”

They looked up at last but the only response he got was a mumbled, “hi, hyung” before the two of them went back to their zombified vigil-keeping. Yixing supposed he shouldn’t have expected any different from the people who’d spent the last three days descending into insanity.

He stepped closer to the bed and caught sight of Baekhyun’s wrist from where it was protruding out from underneath the blankets so Kyungsoo could hold his hand. The dark blue handprint that was stamped over the skin was disturbing enough to choke him.

If the people who’d done this didn’t get at least twenty years in prison, he was going to start a full-scale riot on the front steps of the police station. In his opinion, the crime they’d committed was and always would be so much worse than murder.

They were going to have to release some kind of statement about what had happened now that the whole world knew Baekhyun was involved in a police investigation. They could lie and say that it had all been one big misunderstanding but the chances of the truth getting out were too high.

All they could do now was hope and pray that the cockroaches who would invade every aspect of their private lives given the chance would just accept that some things needed to stay private.

“Alright, boys,” the nurse said softly, giving Kyungsoo’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Twenty minutes is up. I have to drain the fluid now.”

Neither he nor Sehun showed any indication that they’d heard her but Yixing found himself unable to look away as she carefully manoeuvred the blankets so that Baekhyun’s bare stomach was exposed.

He was bruised there, too, but the most noticeable and disturbing adjuncts by far were the two slender tubes sticking out of the flesh just below his naval, both of them coiled harmlessly against his abdomen and siphoned off at the end with little blue valves.

They shouldn’t be there. They looked wrong and out of place. A tiny voice in the back of Yixing’s head was telling him to grab them both and wrench them from his little brother’s skin.

The nurse worked quickly and respectfully, ensuring that only the necessary areas of Baekhyun’s body were uncovered by the blankets while she attached the extra tube to the catheter on the right.

It trailed down towards the large plastic container that was hooked onto the leg of the bed and as soon as she opened the valve, the warmed transparent fluid began to flood the vessel and dribble into the container.

“It’ll only take a couple of minutes,” the woman assured Yixing when she caught him watching, tucking the insulting layers back over Baekhyun’s body. “And you are …?”

“Yixing.”

“Well, Yixing …” she had a nice voice. Sweet, feathery, comforting. She reminded him of his grandmother. “You’ve got a very strong friend here. Kyungsoo will tell you that when he came in, it wasn’t looking good at all, but now look at him.”

If he was honest, Yixing couldn’t see how Baekhyun could possibly be doing any better, but then again, he hadn’t seen him when they’d first pulled him out of the water. It was a dread to think about what he’d looked like then.

“His temperature’s going in the right direction, his heart rate is coming back up, his breathing’s improved massively and it’s only been a couple of hours since we started the rewarming process.”

Yixing just nodded. He didn’t know what else he could do.

The soft trickle of the saline tank filling up and the rhythmic beep of the machines were the only sounds in the room for a long, long time. No one seemed to know what to say or whether saying anything at all was a good idea.

Yixing found himself unable to move his eyes from the temperature monitor, glaring at the pixelated number as though he could force the decimals to increase with sheer willpower. It hit 30° while he was watching and, by then, the saline tank was full and the nurse was closing the valve.

“I’m going to take the catheters out now,” she told them, but she seemed to have realised that they weren’t going to answer her.

She reached for the blankets that were shrouding the patient’s midriff but pulled back immediately as Kyungsoo suddenly sucked a very sharp breath in through his teeth and all attention was drawn to Baekhyun’s face.

His eyes were open. They were barely slits of bloodshot whites but they were open and beginning to widen little by little as his mind slowly came back to awareness.

“Baekhyun?” the nurse called, leaning across Kyungsoo’s body to try and get into her patient’s line of sight. “Honey, can you hear me?”

Sehun rose from his chair as Yixing stumbled towards the head of the bed and threaded his fingers through Baekhyun’s hair. The white blonde strands were still damp and stiff with saltwater. He needed to top up his roots as well.

It was weird what the brain came up with in times of intense stress.

“Baek?” Yixing whispered carefully, toying with the tufts of Baekhyun’s fringe the way he used to do when they were trainees together. “You there, Baek? You with me?”

There was no response, just more bleary-eyed blinking, but it was something, and something was better than nothing. His lips were still tinted purple and there was a large bruise encompassing his eye socket. He was probably in pain.

The nurse returned her attention to the catheters in his stomach but her movements were a lot quicker, as if she understood the need to get this procedure over and done with so she could call the doctor in to examine her patient.

Her gloved fingers pinched the first tube and she started to pull, blood beading at the site of penetration, and Baekhyun’s brow crinkled in discomfort. His eyes fluttered closed and he let out a low groan of pain, muffled slightly by the probe between his lips.

“I know, sweetie,” the nurse cooed as Sehun and Kyungsoo tightened their grips on their injured friend’s hands to stop him from struggling. “Just give me a minute and then it’ll be over.”

The first catheter came free with a soft and sickening pop and Baekhyun whined, arms flinching as if he was trying to reach out and stop the assault on his abdominal tissue. 

Yixing didn’t realise the back of his eyes had been burning until his vision was blurred and by then he was too busy cradling Baekhyun’s face in his trembling hands to reach up and wipe the tears from his cheeks.

“Almost done,” he choked thickly even though he knew there was still another catheter to go. “Can you look at me? Can you open your eyes and look at me?”

He wasn’t sure if Baekhyun could hear him over the sound of his own pained moans but his eyes still fluttered open and focused – somewhat – on the face that was looming over him. He was crying, too.

“You’re in a hospital,” Yixing told him, trying not to think about how tightly Kyungsoo and Sehun were having to hold on as the nurse extracted the second tube. “Do you understand? You’re in a hospital.”

He knew what had happened to Baekhyun. He knew and he would never forget for as long as he lived and that was why he was so determined that Baekhyun understood where he was. He couldn’t bear the thought of him believing he was still on that boat with those guys.

His mouth was moving, incoherent sounds bubbling up from the depths of his abused throat, but the thermometer in his airway prevented him from properly enunciating a single syllable and it broke Yixing’s heart to watch him try.

The last tube was successfully removed, eliciting a louder and far more piercing wail of anguish from the patient, and then the nurse was taping cotton buds over the wounds to staunch the spotted bleeding.

“Done,” Yixing assured him. “All done now, Baek. It’s okay now.”

None of this was okay. None of this was ever going to be okay and now Baekhyun was being lied to by the first person he’d seen since the assault.

Kyungsoo and Sehun were still watching with wide eyes and white-knuckled grips on their hyung’s hands, clearly at a loss for what to say or how to help soothe somebody who had been through a lifetime’s worth of trauma in the space of three days.

“I’m gonna get this out of you now, okay?” the nurse explained in that same honey-sweet voice as she gently shunted Kyungsoo aside and reached for the probe. “You might feel a little discomfort but I promise it won’t be painful and it will be quick.”

She kept her promise. The process was relatively speedy but Baekhyun still winced and whimpered as the contraption slithered back up his throat. He tried to rock his head from side to side but Yixing kept him still just long enough for the end of the tube to slip out from between his lips.

“There you go,” the nurse praised as Yixing bowed low over Baekhyun and pressed their foreheads together in a mark of reassurance. “You did so well, honey.”

Baekhyun was still crying, biting down on his swollen lips to try and stem the flow even though his tear ducts seemed to determine to empty themselves entirely. His shoulders were shaking, his eyes were closed once more and the blood pressure monitor was beeping a warning.

Yixing raised his head to get a better look at his little brother’s bruised face and to swat at the droplets with the pads of his thumbs. If he hadn’t been so close, he wouldn’t have heard the mumbled mantra that Baekhyun was subconsciously repeating on an endless loop.

“I’m sorry … I’m sorry … I’m sorry … I’m sorry … I’m sorry …”

Sometimes there just aren't words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keep telling me what you think and what you want to see in upcoming chapters.


	15. A Kind Of Strength

Kyungsoo had been sent to rest. Minseok had reported that Chanyeol was unconscious. Junmyeon had passed out as soon as he returned to the hotel. Jongdae and Jongin were fast asleep outside in the car, too exhausted to drive but fully aware that Baekhyun already had too many visitors.

Apart from Yixing who was still yet to leave his friend’s side, Sehun was the only one who hadn’t slept. It had been a conscious decision of his. To refuse any and all attempts at convincing him to lie down, to resist the urge to close his eyes and let the darkness take him.

He didn’t deserve the luxury of sleep. Not when all of this was his fault in the first place.

No one had brought it up or even dared to think about it but they all knew it was the truth. If Sehun had done something that night, if Sehun had been more forceful, if Sehun hadn’t been so stupid, they could have been readying themselves for another concert at this very moment.

Sleep deprivation, starvation, dehydration … They were his punishments for allowing things to go so wrong so quickly. Baekhyun had endured them while he was clinging on for dear life with no hope of rescue and so Sehun would endure them now.

He would endure them until his debt to his hyung was paid but from where he was sitting now, he was starting to wonder if that time would ever come.

Baekhyun still had the specialised thermal blankets draped over his body and the modified oxygen cannula that filtered humidified air up his nostrils but he’d been permitted to wear his favourite sweater after Jongin had brought it to him from the hotel.

It was definitely a lot more comfortable for him that way. He’d always been covered but now he was properly clothed, at least from the waist upwards, and the familiarity of his own scent must have been a huge comfort after it was washed from his body by the sea.

He was also a lot more lucid now than when he’d first woken up. There were no more tears but there were also no more words, no more expressions, no more anything. He was like a blank canvas, lifeless eyes staring into the abyss and steadily-pinking lips sealed firmly shut.

Where before there had been light and laughter and an omnipresent spark of mischief that even their most aggressive manager couldn’t extinguish, there was now nothing. Endless miles of nothing.

Even if Daehwan and Tak hadn’t sucked the happiness out of him, the sea certainly had. There was nothing even remotely similar to everything that had made him Baekhyun left in his soul.

For the last however many hours, Sehun had sat rigidly in the stiff plastic chair and watched in silence as Baekhyun tapped a non-existent rhythm onto the back of Yixing’s hand with his index finger.

It seemed to be some kind of self-soothing coping mechanism. The older boy’s palm had been resting on his stomach since he’d woken up but it had taken a while before he’d brought his own up to make contact.

And now he was just tapping, playing an invisible piano over his hyung’s metacarpals, his eyes staring unseeingly off into the distance as though he could hear a tune that the rest of them couldn’t.

Every now and then, the same plump honey-voiced nurse would come bustling over with her syrupy smile and velvety hands and would thrust a thermometer in Baekhyun’s ear, closely monitoring the progression of his hypothermia.

The last time she’d come in, it had risen to 33.9. Still a few degrees short of what was considered healthy but progress nonetheless. The blankets and the warm fluids and whatever they’d pumped his stomach with was working.

Attempts at communication weren’t.

The doctor had returned to ask Baekhyun various questions about what he remembered, trying to ascertain if he’d sustained any concussions or brain injuries, but Baekhyun had blatantly ignored every single one of them.

They knew he could talk since he’d done so as soon as he’d opened his eyes and so they knew that he wasn’t a vegetable but everything else was still uncertain. He may have lost his memory, he may be in too much shock to speak, he may be hallucinating, he may believe that everything going on around him was a mirage conjured up by his imagination.

Or – and this was what terrified Sehun the most – he may just not want to talk to them.

What if he hated them for letting him leave? What if he blamed them for the entire event? What if he spent the rest of his life refusing to even look them in the eye? What if he got hold of his phone and told the entire world what they’d done as soon as he got the chance?

What if he decided he was never going to speak again? As in … ever?

Sehun came hurtling back down to reality the minute that Baekhyun stopped tapping. It had become a constant activity and he’d grown so used to it that the moment it was taken away, he felt like his entire world flipped upside down.

From the other side of the bed, Yixing had noticed, too, and the both of them glanced up at the patient’s face to see if he was going to make any attempts at coherent speech. But his eyes were still glassy and his mouth was still closed.

He blinked a couple of times, a little faster than would be considered normal, and then he pried his chapped lips apart but no sound came out.

The doctor had said that the bruises on his throat from the strangulation would render his voice hoarse and weak and agonising to use for some time and a couple of his ribs were also cracked, meaning breathing without causing pain would be difficult for a few weeks.

His eye socket was fractured. The bridge of his nose was chipped. One of his back teeth was missing. Three fingers were broken. There were contusions on his kidney from being kicked repeatedly in the back and both his wrists were sprained from how forcefully he’d been restrained.

None of his physical abrasions were life-threatening or concerning enough to warrant any kind of surgical procedure and the morphine kept him relatively pain-free but those weren’t the injuries they were worried about.

The scars that would be left on his mind for years to come would never truly heal and there was nothing that they could do about it other than to ensure that the people who’d put them there would rot in jail.

Sehun’s imagination had begun to wander again but it came right back with a thump the moment that Baekhyun’s flaky croak broke the silence.

“This is … real … right?”

His eyes moved as he said it, slowly roaming sideways until they found Yixing’s, and if he weren’t so relieved at hearing his hyung’s voice, Sehun would have felt left out.

Yixing’s brow creased in concern and confusion but he still nodded, “Yes. This is real.”

Baekhyun stared at him for a few more seconds, analysing his face as if he was trying to figure out whether or not his hyung was telling the truth, but then he went back to gazing at nothing and mumbled a feeble, “okay.”

He didn’t sound convinced in the slightest.

There was a sharp rap of knuckles on the door that made Sehun flinch – Baekhyun didn’t even bat an eyelid – and both he and Yixing glanced over to see Detective Kim tentatively stepping into the room.

“Hi, Baekhyun,” he said as he moved towards the bed. The occupant didn’t even seem to notice he’d arrived. “My name is Kim Hongjo. I’m with the National Intelligence Service. Would it be okay if I asked you a couple of questions?”

Sehun looked back over at his hyung, expecting more blank stares and silence or at least a gesture of refusal, and therefore surprised when Baekhyun bobbed his head in a very meek and minute nod.

Kim gave each visitor a gesture of acknowledgement before he fished a notepad and pen from his back pocket and pulled up a chair on Yixing’s side of the bed since that was the vague direction in which Baekhyun’s body was angled.

“Now, we can go as slowly as you want. If you need a break, just say so. I’m not here to make you uncomfortable. I just want to find out what happened. Is that alright?”

Another nod but still no eye contact.

“Okay,” Kim hummed, flipping open his notepad and scribbling something at the top of the page. “Can you tell me the names of the people who did this to you?”

They already knew exactly who was responsible but Sehun understood that they had to tick all the boxes for when this went to court. _If_ this went to court. Baekhyun still wasn’t really speaking so there was no way of knowing whether he would want to testify.

“Lee Daehwan,” the patient whispered, resuming his rhythmic tapping against the back of Yixing’s hand. “And … H … Han Tak.”

He stuttered. On Tak’s name. It was another painful reminder of how oblivious they’d all been, focusing the entirety of their attention on Daehwan while the crueller criminal went ignored. Tak was the one Baekhyun was more afraid of, not Daehwan.

“I’m not judging you, Baekhyun,” Kim clarified. “But I need to ask: When you left the bar with them and got into Daehwan’s car, was it willingly? They didn’t force you in any way?”

Baekhyun closed his eyes, a single tear sliding out from between his lashes, and shook his head. Sehun wished he could hold his hand and tell him that it wasn’t his fault, that there was no way he would have known what was going to happen when he followed them down to the docks, but he didn’t want to touch him without his consent.

“And with the boat?” Kim continued, speaking softly and gently as he jotted down Baekhyun’s responses. “Did you board the boat of your own volition as well?”

Another nod, another tear, another pang in the centre of Sehun’s chest. Taking a ride from the friend of his friend and hopping on a boat because he’d always loved the sea was not the same as consenting to have sex.

“And what happened then, Baekhyun?”

That was the question Sehun had been anticipating and dreading in equal measures. He wanted to know what those people had done to his hyung so that he could better understand how to help him but at the same time, he couldn’t think of anything worse than listening to Baekhyun explain the details behind his attack.

He didn’t have to.

Baekhyun hadn’t opened his mouth and the tapping had stopped. The only movement was from his eyes as they zipped from Kim’s notebook to Yixing’s face, in Sehun’s vague direction and then back to Kim.

Sehun understood what he was trying to say before the detective opened his mouth but that didn’t mean the worlds were any less painful.

“Why don’t the two of you wait outside so Baekhyun and I can talk in private?”

They’d expected this. The nature of Baekhyun’s trauma was serious and sensitive and if Sehun was in his position, he wouldn’t want to discuss it in front of the people with whom he spent almost every day.

They rose from their chairs in preparation to leave but before either of them could take a single step, Baekhyun’s hand shot out with speed he shouldn’t have possessed in his condition and latched onto Yixing’s wrist.

“No,” he snapped with surprising ferocity, but the look on his face was one of panic rather than anger.

And it hurt. It hurt more than Sehun could put into words.

Yixing glanced nervously over at him before sinking back into his seat and folding his fingers around Baekhyun’s, and Sehun left the room before anyone could see the humiliating sparkle of tears pooling in the corners of his eyes.

He didn’t go far. Even though he wanted to bury his face in a pillow and scream until his lungs shrivelled up, he didn’t venture further than the corridor outside Baekhyun’s room, choosing instead to sit in one of the chairs set up along the wall.

His hyung hated him. At first, it had just been a hunch driven by guilt and paranoia but now he knew for sure. His hyung loathed his guts. He wouldn’t look at him, he wouldn’t speak to him and now he didn’t even trust him enough to hear about the hell he’d been through.

Sehun agreed. It was his fault. But accepting that didn’t alleviate the sharp sting of self-disgust that rippled through his bloodstream.

He didn’t know how he was supposed to fix this. He didn’t know if this could even be fixed.

Baekhyun would never recover emotionally. He would never be the same again. He was changed for life and not for the better. There was no going back to that night or rewriting the history Sehun had forged when he’d let his hyung walk out the door.

There was no clock in his line of sight so he had no way of knowing how long he sat there, fighting the urge to bite his lip and cry like a toddler. Baekhyun was the one who’d been raped. Baekhyun was the one who was allowed to cry.

It couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes, however, before the door opened and Kim emerged with his face twisted in a solemn frown and his nimble fingers flicking through his notes.

Sehun leapt to his feet immediately, startling the man into giving him his full attention. Over his shoulder, he could see Baekhyun gazing up at the ceiling with a sphynx-like expression and Yixing’s hand clutched in both of his.

“How did it go?”

Kim sighed and put his notepad away, “He answered a couple of questions for me but I’m going to have to come back tomorrow. The trauma’s still fresh and I don’t want to push him over the edge.”

Sehun appreciated the gesture. Most government officials would have pushed and pushed until Baekhyun fell off the precipice but Kim was respecting the victim’s boundaries and doing his best to preserve what little sanity he had left.

The detective looked as if he was about to leave but Sehun stopped him with a frantically blurted, “Sir?”

“Yes?”

“You’ve worked cases like this before, right?” he asked, nervously picking at the hems of his sleeves. “You’ve spoken to people who’ve been through the same kind of thing?” 

Kim grimaced, “Unfortunately, I have.” 

“Do they ever come back?” Sehun choked. “I mean … do they ever recover? Psychologically? Because I know that what Baekhyun-hyung went through is … beyond _anything_ that I could ever understand but the person in that room is not the same one I’ve lived with for the last ten years.”

The look of sympathy on Kim’s face wasn’t quite patronising but still had Sehun feeling a little like he was a child struggling to understand the concept of death.

“There’s no way of knowing how he’s going to go about the healing process and there’s no way of speeding it up either. The only thing you can do now is be there for him as his friend.”

“What if he doesn’t want me to be?” Sehun babbled before he could stop himself, wincing when Kim’s eyebrows creased in confusion.

“What do you mean?”

Sehun had already embarrassed himself enough. There was no reason to stop now and it wasn’t exactly like he could ask his other hyungs for advice. They would be stunned at his determination to make this entire scenario all about him.

“What if he doesn’t want me to be there anymore? Not as a friend, not as anything. He despises me. He can’t even look me in the eye.” 

“Sehun,” Kim sighed. “He can’t look anyone in the eye.”

Sehun blinked dumbly, waiting for the detective to elaborate.

“He doesn’t blame you,” the man continued kindly. “He blames himself. In his mind, he was the one who made the decision to leave the hotel, to get in the car, to board the boat, to go down into the parking lot and meet with Tak. He can’t look at any of you because he’s ashamed of his own stupidity even though we both know that none of this was his fault.”

It made sense but it also didn’t. There was no way Baekhyun could have found a reason to hate himself for this. He was too smart for that. He should know that all of this was Sehun’s doing, not his own.

Suddenly the reason for the string of slurred apologies he’d emitted as soon as he woke up was a lot clearer.

“But …” the maknae mumbled blankly. Pathetically. “He’s looking at Yixing-hyung.”

Kim sighed again, reaching up to rub at one of his eyebrows before allowing his hand to fall on Sehun’s shoulder and squeeze reassuringly.

“Yixing was the first person he saw when he woke up,” he explained. “Some people call it ‘imprinting’. While he was out there in the sea, freezing cold and starving, he probably started hallucinating. Hypothermia and sleep deprivation can have those effects sometimes. Yixing was the first thing he recognised as familiar, safe and real. That’s why he won’t let go of him. He’s scared that, if he lets him out of his sight, all of this will disappear.”

And now Sehun felt like a total idiot. It would explain why Baekhyun had asked them, _‘is this real?’_ just before Kim had entered. His mind was still trying to come to terms with the fact that he’d been rescued.

“Do you think he’ll ever be able to live his life again?” the maknae whispered, glancing once again through the window at Baekhyun’s blank and lifeless eyes. “Do you think he even wants to live at all?”

It sounded like a stupid question and maybe it was but it had been weighing on his mind for hours. His hyung’s soul appeared to have left his body and maybe it was better that way. If he didn’t have to think, he didn’t have to remember.

Maybe, for that reason, he would never try to think again.

“Sehun …” Kim said for what felt like the millionth time. “Baekhyun held on in the middle of the sea for three days. He didn’t have any reason to believe anyone was coming for him, he couldn’t eat, he couldn’t drink, he was in a lot of pain and probably knew he was going to die. It would have been a lot easier on him if he’d just let go and drowned but he didn’t. He held on. That’s a kind of strength I’ve never encountered before. He wouldn’t do that if he was just going to give up now.”

Sehun was speechless, but Kim wasn’t done.

“Trust me,” he smiled, giving the boy’s shoulder another comforting squeeze. “He wants to live.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keep telling me what you want to see in the upcoming chapters so that I know what kind of content to produce :)


	16. Waves, Sea Salt, Cold

The sea stretches out for miles. Miles and miles and miles of black. The moon is high. Silver. Ghostly. It reflects off the water in beautiful ripples of shimmering silver. But he shouldn’t be here.

_“I thought you said we were going back to the hotel.”_

A cocky smirk. A chuckle. A twinkle in the eye.

_“We’re gonna take you out on the boat.”_

_“I should really get back.”_

_“Oh, come on! I thought you said you’d always wanted to go sailing.”_

He’s right. He loves the idea of sailing. His uncle had a boat when they were kids. His mother never let him go out. Too dangerous. Risk of capsizing, drowning, dying. He still wants to go sailing.

_“Well … yeah …”_

_“Then stop being such a girl and get your ass over here. We’ll get you back in time. Won’t we, Tak?”_

_“Yeah.”_

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He believes him. He laughs with him. He allows him to take photos because he says he wants proof that he’s friends with a K-Pop star. He doesn’t want them to think he’s afraid of the ramifications.

He doesn’t take the Soju. It doesn’t matter.

_“So what do you think? Worth the risk of getting in trouble?”_

It’s beautiful. The smell of salt. The wind. The glisten of the moon, the wink of the stars, the chirp of the sea birds. He even swears he sees a dolphin beneath the surface of the water.

_“Definitely. It’s amazing.”_

_“So are you.”_

Hand on his waist. Looks up. He’s too close. Kissing. Kissing? KISSING! Fists come up. Pushes. He stumbles. He’s panting. Doesn’t want to be on this boat anymore.

_“What the fuck are you doing?”_

_“Really? You’re saying you haven’t been asking for this the entire night?”_

Fear. Terrified. Hyperventilating. Need to get off. Need to get off now. Need to get off or something bad will happen. Something really, really bad. He’s so stupid. His voice shakes. 

_“Take me back to the docks right now.”_

_“Come on, Baekhyun. Just give me a kiss.”_

Get off. Get off, get off, get off, get off. Help … Help me. Tak … Tak’s watching. He’s just watching. He’s not doing anything to stop this. Daehwan, stop this. Stop this, please. Get off me. Get off me!

_“I said no!”_

Punched in the face. Cheek explodes with pain. Eye socket throbbing. Vision blurred. Tears working their way out. Looks up. He’s so angry. He’s going to hurt you. Get away. Get away now. Run.

There’s nowhere to run.

_“I wasn’t asking.”_

Fist to the jaw. Head snaps back. Pain. Hurts, hurts, hurts, hurts. Stumbles. Falls. Hits the deck hard. Tries to get up. Boot in the ribs. Hurts, hurts, hurts, hurts, hurts. Boot in the stomach. Hurts, hurts, hurts, hurts, hurts. Curls into a ball. He keeps kicking.

_“Stop …”_

Blood in his mouth. Coppery tongue. Spits it out. Protect your head. Protect your abdomen. It has to stop soon. He can’t keep going forever. He’s drunk. It’s late. He’ll be tired. He has to stop soon.

_“Please …”_

_“I like the sound of that. Say it again.”_

_“Please … Stop …”_

Pushed onto his back. Weight on his chest. Hurts, hurts, hurts, hurts, hurts. Can’t breathe. Something’s broken. Something’s bleeding. Coughs. Hurts worse. Help me. Somebody help me. Can’t scream. No one will hear me.

_“Get off me … Please, get off me …”_

Wrists seized. Slammed against the deck. Pinned either side of his head. Whimpers in pain.

_“Tak, help me hold him down.”_

_“Please … Please don’t do this.”_

Help me. Help me, help me, help me. Hurts. Can’t breathe. He tears my hoodie off. Try to struggle. They’re too strong. His lips are rough. He bites. Tugs, licks, sucks. I cry. Don’t want to but can’t stop it. Can’t stop them.

“Hey … Hey, it’s okay … I got you. I got you.”

Baekhyun hadn’t realised he’d been gasping for breath, skin shining with a sheen of sweat, eyes screwed shut and muscles locked in a carcass of terror until Yixing cupped one hand against his cheek and pressed a kiss to his temple.

“You’re in the hospital. I’m right here. It’s not happening anymore.”

They were lying in bed together, Yixing on top of the covers and Baekhyun underneath them. That was their way of making sure their bodies were close enough to provide comfort to one another but still separated so as not to trigger any unwanted reactions.

Yixing hadn’t left his side in over twenty-four hours and Baekhyun knew that his hyung was exhausted from the fight with his manager, travelling to Korea and then remaining standing beside his bed for an entire day, but he couldn’t bring himself to let him leave.

It was selfish. He was selfish. This entire thing had been his fault and now he was making his members suffer. If he was brave enough, he would let Yixing lie down in his own bed where he could get a proper rest and he would deal with this on his own, but he was weak.

Weak and stupid and selfish.

“You okay?” came the whisper in his ear as Yixing nuzzled sleepily at his hair. “You back with me.”

Baekhyun nodded. He couldn’t speak without his voice cracking or his eyes brimming with tears and any attempts at verbal responses caused an unpleasant twinge of electricity to ricochet through his throat.

Hands clutching his windpipe. Crushing it. Squeezing the air out. Can’t breathe, can’t breathe, can’t breathe. Please let go. Please let me breathe. Black spots. Lights popping. Blood rushing in his ears. Can’t breathe, can’t breathe, can’t breathe. Please let me go!

_“What if he tells someone?”_

_“Nah. He won’t tell anyone. Because he knows that, if he does, his career will be ruined. He won’t be able to prove that I did anything he didn’t beg me for and if he tries, all he’ll ever be known as is the slutty little homo who cried rape.”_

“Hey, Baekhyun?”

He opened his eyes and familiarised himself with the plain white ceiling above his head. The sound he could hear was the beep of the heart monitor and not the waves crashing against his body as he clung to that hardened metal caging and sobbed with helplessness.

The scent he could smell was hospital disinfectant and not sea salt as it crashed over his head, crawled up his nose, gushed down his throat and choked him. The sensation he could feel was heated blankets and Yixing’s warmth, not ice-cold water and a stranger lying on top of him.

It wasn’t happening anymore.

“Baekhyun?”

He nodded to show that he was listening, unconsciously tightening his grip on the arm that Yixing had slung across his chest. It took him a couple more minutes to realise that his hyung had fallen asleep beside him and the person who was actually talking was Junmyeon.

The leader stood over his bed, eyebrows knitted with worry and hands resting lithely against the safety railing, as though he wanted to reach out and touch but was afraid of what kind of reaction he would elicit.

He was wearing his military uniform.

“Leaving,” Baekhyun rasped, hating the weakness in his own voice.

It wasn’t a question; more of a statement. He wasn’t asking Junmyeon why he was abandoning them or if he was coming back. He was just letting him know that he was aware and he understood.

He wouldn’t want to waste his time with a pathetic idiot either.

“Yeah,” Junmyeon nodded, finally deciding to thread his fingers through Baekhyun’s hair. “They only gave me three days off and I’m already pushing it. If I don’t go back now, they’ll report me as a deserter.”

Baekhyun didn’t want him to leave but he didn’t want him to stay either. Junmyeon had a duty that he owed and a life that he deserved to enjoy. Baekhyun was just like a leaden anvil dragging him down.

Drowning him.

Water in his mouth. In his lungs. In his eyes and ears and nose. Can’t dry his face because his clothes are wetter than he is. Can’t reach up to protect his head because he has to hold on. Can’t stop holding on because he’ll drown.

Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Hold on because you can’t let them win. Hold on because you have to tell the world what they did to you. Hold on because it doesn’t matter that your image is ruined and your career is scrapped. Hold on because they can never do this to anyone else.

_“Here; take my jacket.”_

_“I d-don’t want anything from y-y-you.”_

_“Your clothes are ripped to hell and you’re shivering. Just take my jacket.”_

You lied. You said you wanted to help me. You said you wanted to apologise for what he did. For not stopping him. You said you had no choice. You said he made you. You lied to me. You pulled out a knife and shoved me in the trunk of your car and it was so small and so dark.

I trusted you. I wanted to believe you were different. I wanted to give you your jacket back because I thought you were a better man that he was. I was wrong. You lied. I was already hurt and you hurt me again. I trusted you and you treated me worse than he did.

_“Stop fighting me! You owe me this! I risked my ass for you, you ungrateful bitch!”_

_“I’m sorry, I’m sorry … Just … Please … I can’t do this again … I can’t … Please …”_

The first time, he fought for longer. He bucked and twisted and shrieked and kicked in the desperate hope that he would be able to throw them off him and escape. Even if he had to jump in the sea and swim to shore, anything was better than what Daehwan was doing to him.

The second time, though, the struggle was shorter. For the first minute or so, he gave it everything he had. He screamed until his throat was hoarse and lashed out at every part of Tak he could reach but then he stopped.

He already knew how it was going to go. He already knew what was going to happen. He already knew that there was no point resisting because even if he had the physical strength buried somewhere inside of him, his mind had already given up hope of escape.

“Baekhyun?”

Why did he have to come back? Why did he have to wake up? Why couldn’t they allow him just to float in that limbo between conscious and not so that he wouldn’t have to deal with the memories or the fallout?

“Media,” he croaked, refusing to meet Junmyeon’s eye for fear that he would see disappointment or resentment.

“They released a news report two days after you went missing,” his leader relayed, and if Baekhyun wasn’t so numb, he would have flinched. “We were running out of time and the police wanted anyone who saw anything to come forward but no specific details were disclosed.”

_“All he’ll ever be known as is the slutty little homo who cried rape.”_

“The company released a statement this morning just telling everyone that you’re safe but, again, the public don’t know any details.”

_“Get up!”_

_“I-I can’t … My legs …”_

Can’t feel them. It’s like I’ve been split in two. Can’t move, can’t feel, can’t breathe. Hurting. Bleeding. Crying. Tears on my face. Skin torn and broken. Bones cracked and bruised. Want to die, want to die, want to die.

_“For fuck’s sake …”_

_“No … Please … I won’t tell anyone … I promise … I won’t … Please …”_

_“I said get up!”_

Pain. Pain, pain, pain. Stop. Please. Stop. Dragged across the deck. Bare feet scraping on wood. Ribs screaming. Can’t fight back. Too weak. Too tired. Too hurt. T-Shirt ripped. Sweats too thin.

Arms beneath his knees. Lifting up. Off the floor. Can’t find the breath to shout.

_“Please …”_

Arms gone. Falling. Falling. Down, down, down, down. Splash. Water. Cold. Can’t breathe. Have to breathe. So cold. So, so, so cold. Boat driving away. Leaving him. Nothing to hold onto. Nothing to keep him up. Can’t breathe, can’t breathe, can’t breathe.

This is how he dies.

“Hey, Baek? You know that none of this is your fault, right?”

Baekhyun ignored him, listening instead to Yixing’s steady breathing and trying to block out the sound of the sea and the sensation of his lungs filling up with water. He didn’t want to talk. Maybe not ever.

All they ever wanted to talk about was the attack. That was his entire life now. Just the attack. Over and over and over again. They weren’t letting him forget, as if he could forget. They weren’t letting him move on, as if moving on was even a possibility.

They didn’t understand.

He’d trusted those guys to take him home. They hadn’t. He’d trusted Tak to take the jacket and then just go on his merry way. He hadn’t.

He wasn’t the same person anymore and every single one of his members was looking at him like he was suddenly going to go back to being that bouncy ball of energy but it was the bouncy ball of energy that had almost gotten him killed.

That bouncy ball of energy was too naïve. Ignorant. Idiotic. That bouncy ball of energy was dead now. 

“Baek?”

He didn’t want to speak to them. Why didn’t they get that? He just wanted to lie here in a state of unconsciousness so deep and drugged-up that he wouldn’t have to wallow in the memories of what he’d allowed to happen to him.

“Minseok-hyung and Kyungsoo are sticking around for a few more days but then they have to go back. I have one more week of basic training before I get my phone returned to me and Jongdae’s promised to keep me updated with the trial and everything but … I just want you to know that you can call me, okay? Even if you just want us to sit in silence, you can call me.”

The trial. Had Baekhyun even consented to the trial yet? He couldn’t remember doing so, but he couldn’t remember a lot of things that had happened in the past few days. And the things he could remember were the things he didn’t want to remember most.

“I’m going to go now, Baek.”

He should say something. ‘Thank you’ or ‘I’m sorry’ or even just ‘goodbye’ but he couldn’t spit out the words. Maybe staying silent was better anyway. Not just for him but for everyone. His mouth had been the thing that had gotten him into this mess in the first place.

“I love you, okay?”

He was gone before Baekhyun realised that he loved him, too.

Yixing mumbled something in his sleep, bringing his hand up to rest against his little brother’s chest and nestling further into the crook of his neck, but Baekhyun just continued to stare at the ceiling.

Waves. Sea salt. Cold.

Waves. Sea salt. Cold.

Waves. Sea salt. Cold.

He was starting to wonder if letting himself drown would have been a better option.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> acupofwarmsoup, I hope this was to your satisfaction :)
> 
> Everybody, keep telling me what you want to see in the next chapters. I'll try to incorporate everyone's ideas (within reason) before the end of the fic.


	17. The Best Photos

Minseok turned the phone over in his hands, ran his thumb across the chipped edge and clicked the home button to bring up the lock screen.

It was a picture of a sunset they’d all witnessed together while shooting a reality show in Dubai. The sky had gone from blue to white to pale gold and then to magenta in a matter of minutes, chalky pink streaks arching through the air as the stars started to peek through.

Baekhyun always took the best photos.

The police had taken the phone to the station and examined it for evidence but they’d found nothing of use and so it had been returned. Minseok was just waiting for Baekhyun to wake up so he could give it back to him.

If it wasn’t for that phone, they may not have realised he was missing for at least another couple of hours. It was only because Sehun had been calling him, had recognised the ringtone and had opened up his messages that they found out as soon as they did.

Baekhyun mumbled something in his sleep, brow furrowed as though in distress. There was a thin sheen of sweat clinging to the side of his neck and his heartrate was starting to rise. The typical symptoms of yet another nightmare.

Minseok shuffled forwards a little further in his seat, letting the phone rest in his lap so he could wrap one hand around Baekhyun’s and use the other to thread fingers through his hair. He made a couple of gentle shushing noises. It was all he could do.

Yixing had left the bedside for the first time since he’d arrived, taking advantage of the fact that Baekhyun was fast asleep. He was still in the hospital, somewhere down the corridor in one of the bathrooms taking a shower, but Minseok hoped he’d get back soon.

He wasn’t sure how Baekhyun would react if he awoke to find his safety net was gone.

The phone buzzed with another message. Probably the fiftieth since Minseok had picked it up. Every two minutes or so, the screen would ignite with another incoming text and each time there was a different name at the top.

Taeyong. IU. Mark. Lucas. Ten. Taemin. Jinki. Heechul. Leeteuk. Kyuhyun. Taeyeon. Jaeseon. Suzy. Soogeun from the variety show ‘Ask Us Anything’. There were so many. 

Minseok hadn’t opened a single one of them simply because they weren’t his to open but he hoped that all the people who were trying to get a hold of his friend were saying things that would help him feel better once he got a chance to read them.

He needed to know that he was loved right now, more than anything.

Every single one of them wanted to be in this room at all times just so they could remind themselves that things hadn’t ended as disastrously as they could have, but any more than two visitors at once was too overwhelming for Baekhyun’s traumatised mind to cope with.

And because Yixing was never allowed to leave, it was always him and one other. Right now, Minseok and Kyungsoo were the most frequent flyers. They were each trying to get as much time in with Baekhyun as they could before they were forced to return to their units.

The heart monitor hit 120bpm and, like a switch had been flipped, the patient’s eyes shot open.

“Get off me …” he choked in a rasp, gaze snapping from left to right and hands scrabbling frantically at his chest as he tried and failed to sit up. “Get off me, get-get off me, get off me, get …”

For a split second, Minseok was too shocked to move. Baekhyun seemed to be trapped in some kind of transition between awake and asleep and he clearly thought that either Daehwan or Tak was still on top of him. He wasn’t actually conscious right now.

“Baekhyun!” Minseok called, keeping one hand on his dongsaeng’s shoulder to keep him lying back against the cushions while he nervously eyed the staff alert button. “Baekhyun, it’s Minseok-hyung. You have to wake up!”

More thrashing, more repetitive mumbling, eyes still wider than saucepans as his overly long fingernails scratched at the back of Minseok’s hand like a frightened animal.

“Wake up!” Minseok repeated as he took hold of the boy’s face and tried to get their gazes to lock. “It’s me! Baek, it’s me! It’s Minseok-hyung! You have to wake up! It’s not happening anymore! It’s over!”

Despite how inexperienced he was at this, his attempts at soothing the trauma victim seemed to be working. Baekhyun’s fight slowly began to ebb away, although that might have been just because he was running out of energy.

His eyes were still bulging out of his head, zapping in every available direction and he had both hands clutched to his chest as though he was trying to protect his heart from further pain, but at least he was no longer in danger of falling off the bed.

“Hey,” Minseok whispered, flicking the boy’s sweat-slicked fringe from his face. “Are you with me? Do you know where you are?”

The incessant beeping was gradually slowing down but the eye movements most definitely weren’t. It was like he was trying to search for something but couldn’t move anything other than his pupils.

“You’re in a hospital. You’ve been here for the past three days. I’m right here. Minseok-hyung’s right here. The others are somewhere nearby. You’re safe. Everybody loves you. Nothing is happening.”

They were Yixing’s words. Minseok was just mimicking them.

And, apparently, Baekhyun knew it, too.

“Yixing-hyung …” he rattled out on a shaky exhale. “Yixing-hyung … Yixing-hyung …”

“He’s just taking a shower,” Minseok tried to sooth him. He would never understand what kind of chemical imbalance in Baekhyun’s brain left him unable to cope without Yixing but it was stronger than Teflon. “He’ll be back soon, okay? Look, his jacket’s still there.”

He pointed to the cluster of stressed denim that was draped clumsily over the chair on the other side of the bed and Baekhyun’s overly active eyes immediately honed in on it.

It was completely inappropriate and inordinately selfish but Minseok couldn’t help the feeling of jealousy that threatened to spasm through his gut. He knew it wasn’t right to trivialise Baekhyun’s trauma and yet there was a small part of him that wanted to be as important to that boy as Yixing was.

There was the click of the door and Minseok had to resist the urge to breathe a sigh of relief. He knew he should have been able to take care of his little brother by himself but, at the moment, it seemed like Yixing was the only one Baekhyun was willing to interact with.

However, the person who tentatively poked their head around the door was not Yixing.

“Hi,” Taemin whispered through a smile. “Can I come in? Or is this a bad time?”

Minseok glanced down at Baekhyun, searching for any kind of reaction that would help answer that question, but the patient was still staring fixatedly at the jacket on the back of the chair.

“Come in,” Minseok nodded. They knew Taemin. They loved Taemin. Taemin was okay. “It’s nice to see you.”

He got out of his seat so that his senior could take his place seeing as the one on the other side of the bed was clearly occupied by Yixing’s jacket, and Taemin whispered his gratitude as he sank into it.

“Hi, hyung,” he murmured. “I hope it’s okay that I came to see you. If you want me to leave then you can just say so. I won’t be mad.”

Having retreated a few paces backwards, Minseok felt his heart soften. Taemin was too good for this world, always knowing exactly what everyone around him needed. He probably didn’t yet know that Baekhyun barely said more than two sentences in a day but the sentiment was there.

“Taeyong wanted to come and see you, too,” Taemin continued, seemingly unbothered by the fact that the person he was addressing wasn’t even looking at him. “And Mark, but I think their managers didn’t let them.”

That wasn’t the truth. Minseok had actually been the one to turn those two away when they’d asked if they could pay a visit. Baekhyun still saw Taeyong and Mark as children; little brothers that he wanted to protect. There was no way he would want them to see him like this.

“They told me to tell you that they love you though. Taeyong might have even cried. You know how he gets. He practically worships the ground you walk on.”

He smirked weakly at his own joke and, in one of the most breath-taking and shocking turns of events that Minseok had ever seen, Baekhyun smirked, too. His head rolled over on the pillow until he was facing them and for the first time, they could see the tears in his eyes.

“Oh, baby,” Minseok cooed before he could stop himself.

He’d never called Baekhyun – or even Sehun – ‘baby’ before but there was something about the pain in his little brother’s expression that drew the maternal instincts from deep within his gut. Without a chair to sit in, he crouched down beside the bed and took Baekhyun’s hand.

“You can cry,” he whispered. “It’s okay to cry.”

God knew that all of them had cried enough. There was no shame in it anymore. Baekhyun had been so void of all emotion for so long and when he did shed tears, he always refused to look at any of them as if he was embarrassed to show weakness.

Now not only was he staring Taemin right in the eye as he cried, but he wasn’t even attempting to hide it. Maybe he was too tired, maybe he just didn’t care anymore, but it felt like progress even if it didn’t look that way.

“I fucked up,” he whimpered in that same rattling tone. “I fucked everything up.”

“You didn’t,” Minseok cut in, squeezing his little brother’s hand even tighter to punctuate his words. “You didn’t fuck anything up, Baek. This wasn’t your fault. Do you understand me? Nothing is fucked up.”

But that wasn’t strictly true, was it?

He’d seen the posts online. People – fans and anti-fans alike – were demanding to know what had happened since they didn’t seem to be particularly happy with the explanation provided. Minseok understood that it had been vague and non-specific but that had been for Baekhyun’s protection, not just for convenience.

A statement would need to be issued, preferably before the trial started in two weeks’ time. They had to take control of the situation otherwise it would spiral wildly out of hand and theories that were more like to hurt rather than help would start to fly.

Nothing was ever going to be the same again and Minseok was lucky because he got to go to the army and forget about what was occurring back home. The others couldn’t do that. They were stuck with the fallout and they couldn’t escape.

Taemin was carefully combing Baekhyun’s fringe away from his face, looking as if he wanted nothing more than to lean forwards and press his lips to his hyung’s forehead.

No one outside of their group and their management knew the full story but Minseok was glad that Taemin knew better than to breach unspoken boundaries.

“You have so many people right here,” he was murmuring softly over the sound of Baekhyun’s hitched breathing. “And they all love you. They’re all going to be with you to hold your hand through this.”

Baekhyun was still gazing up at him, entire body trembling and lips pressed so firmly together that it was probably difficult for him to breathe.

He no longer needed the oxygen cannula but somehow that made the steadily greening bruises on his face so much more prominent.

And the ones on his throat … Minseok still couldn’t look at them without wanting to be sick.

The contusions on his kidney were healing, the cracks in his ribs were stabilising, the fractures to his nose and face could only be left to repair themselves and his blood pressure was no longer in danger of killing him while he slept.

There was little more that the doctors could do for him and while that meant that he could go home in the next couple of days, it also meant that he would lose the sense of safety and stability that he had here in the hospital.

They had no way of knowing how he would react to that.

Glancing up at the sound of the door opening yet again, Minseok gave Baekhyun’s hand another squeeze to alert him to the new entry.

“Why are there tears?” Yixing asked, his hair still damp from the shower as he padded across the room. “Is Taemin making you cry? Because I can get him to stand in the corner if he is.”

Baekhyun snorted in amusement and a splurge of phlegm shot out of his nose to lather his top lip. Immediately, his hand snapped to his face to wipe the traces away and hide his embarrassment but all of them were already teasing him for it.

It made him giggle harder. It was a coarse and strangled sound but it was also the most melodic and beautiful sound that had ever dared grace the earth.

Minseok had been starting to wonder if he would ever hear Baekhyun laugh again.

The patient reached up with his trembling hands and bruised wrists and latched onto Yixing’s forearm, sniffling a little as he pulled his hyung closer to the bed.

“Alright,” Yixing conceded, toeing off his shoes. “Shift over.”

Taemin cradled Baekhyun’s head just to make sure he wouldn’t accidentally hit it on the railing as he shuffled to the left so that Yixing had room to climb onto the mattress beside him.

He slid his arm behind Baekhyun’s neck as a makeshift pillow and Minseok watched fondly as his baby brother nestled into the newfound warmth. He was still smiling faintly, even through the tears on his face, but Yixing was quick to wipe those away with the pad of his thumb and then he was just smiling.

For maybe an hour, the three of them just sat there, occasionally whispering another joke just so they could preserve that smile a little longer. It was too precious and too priceless for them to allow it to slip through their fingers yet again.

But eventually, Baekhyun’s lips grew lax along with the rest of his face and his eyes remained closed even after Taemin jokingly threatened to sign Kyungsoo up for the reality show _‘We Got Married’_ when he got out of the military.

They waited a couple more minutes, just to be sure, but the slowing of the heart monitor was a good a sign as any that Baekhyun had fallen asleep.

And for once, he wasn’t immediately thrust onto the horns of a nightmare.

“He’ll get through this,” Minseok muttered absently, watching his friend’s chest rise and fall in steady intervals. “It’ll take time but he’ll get through it. So long as those bastards go to jail, he’ll get through it.”

Yixing nodded, still stroking Baekhyun’s hair with his free hand, but it was then that Taemin chose to remind them how clueless the rest of the world still was.

“What actually happened to him?”

Minseok stiffened slightly in his seat and locked eyes with Yixing over the top of their unconscious buddy. There was some invisible conversation that passed between them where they debated whether or not to tell the truth but the answer was clear from the start.

In order for Baekhyun to move on and at least try to heal, as few people needed to know as possible. That was how they protected his dignity and that was how they respected his privacy.

“Trust me, Tae,” Minseok breathed with a reassuring hand on Taemin’s thigh. “You don’t want to know.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm losing motivation with this story a little so it's not going to drag on for a lot longer. Maybe five or six more chapters. So if there's something you really REALLY want to see before then, let me know.


	18. The Bronze Envelope

Baekhyun didn’t want to leave the hospital. He didn’t state it explicitly but they could all tell just from the way he behaved.

Clearly, he’d felt a lot safer and more secure when there was a heart monitor beside his bed, reminding him he was alive, and an IV in his arm that could administer a sedative whenever his thoughts became too overwhelming.

After a week, however, it became clear that his physical health was no longer the problem.

Daehwan’s trial date was set for ten days’ time and Tak’s was almost immediately afterwards so Baekhyun couldn’t return to his home in Seoul or else he would constantly be travelling to and fro in preparation for his day in court.

Their manager had wanted them to continuing staying in the hotel but Jongdae had shut that idea down immediately. There was no way they were forcing Baekhyun back into the building Tak had abducted him from.

So they rented an apartment. It was small but Junmyeon was already gone, Minseok and Kyungsoo would be soon and Yixing was being forced to return to Beijing so he could sign some kind of sponsorship deal.

Jongin and Sehun had also opted to check back into the hotel to give Baekhyun the space he needed. Chanyeol and Jongdae would be the ones staying with him. They weren’t as effective at keeping him calm as Yixing was but they were the next best choice.

“I have hyung’s number on speed dial,” Jongdae said as he and Minseok lugged their bags over the threshold of the new apartment. “So, if the worst comes to the worst, I’ll just video call him and get him to talk to Baek.”

“You’ll do fine,” Minseok dismissed, depositing one of the suitcases at the foot of the stairs. “And Yixing will be back long before the trial begins so you won’t have to juggle things by yourself for too long.”

Jongdae wasn’t so sure. Ten days without Baekhyun’s emotional support person was a big ask, particularly when the boy was already on edge from leaving the protection of the hospital.

“When are you and Kyungsoo leaving?”

“Tomorrow.”

This couldn’t have happened at a worse time. Not that there would be a _good_ time, but right now was the complete opposite of ideal. Every member of their group who had any sense of leadership and cool-headedness – Junmyeon, Minseok, Kyungsoo, Yixing – hadn’t been here.

“You couldn’t even wait for the lawyer to come by?”

“What can I say?” Minseok shrugged solemnly. “I can’t exactly refuse to go back. They’ll fine me for it.”

Jongdae didn’t voice his thoughts, choosing instead to keep his mouth shut. If he told his hyung that he would take the fine over abandoning Baekhyun anytime, he would be doing nothing but making him feel guilty, and God knew they already had enough guilt within their ranks.

“Okay.”

Minseok gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze and they both turned instinctively to look out of the window at where Baekhyun was standing at the foot of the garden path.

He’d started by trying to help them unpack but then he’d drifted off and now he was just staring at the sky as if he’d never seen before. It was peculiar. He must have become perfectly familiar with it when he was clinging to that buoy with nothing else to look at.

Maybe that was why he was so star-struck now. The expanse above his head was the only thing that had helped him keep track of how long he was out there. It held the stars, the sun, the moon. The only things that changed during those three days of pain and desperation.

“I don’t know what to say to him,” Jongdae murmured before he could stop himself.

This wasn’t about him. None of this was about him. He couldn’t make this about him when he was the least important person in this scenario. The only reason he was even here right now was because Baekhyun needed him. That was his role in this story.

But what did you say to someone who used to light up an entire stadium just by breathing and now could barely even illuminate a single room?

Beside him, he felt Minseok taking a deep breath, preparing to say something helpful and motivational but he never got to hear whatever it was.

A man in a pressed suit and overly shiny shoes had marched right up to their car, sticking out his palm and not even waiting for Baekhyun to take it before he forcefully initiated the overly firm handshake.

Baekhyun was facing away from the house so Jongdae couldn’t see the expression on his face but he could see just from the way he snatched his hand back that he was uncomfortable.

“Who the fuck is that?” Minseok muttered, already halfway to the door. “It’s not the lawyer, is it?”

No. It wasn’t. The lawyer was a woman.

Minseok seized the door handle and gave it an impatient rattle but it seemed to be jammed. The mechanism was old and rusted and Jongdae had known from the minute he saw it that it was going to be a pain to live with but now it was just downright dangerous.

There was an unknown man standing unnecessarily close to their traumatised friend and they couldn’t get to him.

Jongdae watched helplessly as the stranger reached into his inside jacket pocket and procured a bulging bronze envelope. His greasy face twisted into an equally greasy smile and he held it out to Baekhyun.

“Hyung,” Jongdae called without taking his eyes off the pair in the driveway. “Get the door open. Now.”

Baekhyun took a step backwards, shaking his head and lifting his hands in a gesture of passive surrender but the guy in the suit didn’t seem to be giving up.

He closed the distance between them, slipped a hand around the back of Baekhyun’s neck and pulled him forwards so that he could whisper something in his ear without giving the singer a chance to run away.

Jongdae saw Baekhyun’s entire body go rigid at the contact.

“Hyung!”

“Got it.”

Minseok threw the door open just before Jongdae could seize one of the large marble ornaments on the window sill and use it to break the glass, and the both of them tripped over the threshold.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Minseok roared, sprinting down the garden path towards the man who was still not stepping away from their friend. “Let go of him!”

The stranger didn’t even look concerned. His lips were still curled in a disgusting smirk as he released Baekhyun, stuffed the envelope into his hand, turned on his polished heel and stalked off down the street.

Baekhyun dropped the offering like it had burned him, staggered backwards a couple of steps and probably would have fallen flat on his ass if Minseok hadn’t got to him first and steadied him with an arm around his waist.

Jongdae looked at his big brother’s bulging eyes, colourless face and heaving chest before glancing down at the envelope that was lying discarded on the ground at their feet. It had never been sealed and so the multitude of bills crammed inside were peeking out from under the fold.

That was a lot of money.

Minseok was saying something but Jongdae skidded out onto the road in pursuit of the suited intruder. The roar of an expensive engine sounded from around the street corner but by the time he got there, the sleek black Mercedes was already screeching off in the opposite direction.

Who was that? How had they known where they were? And why the hell would they try to give Baekhyun several billion won?

When he returned to the garden, Baekhyun was shoving Minseok away from him and alternating between wringing his hands and frantically wiping them on his shirt as though the envelope had somehow dirtied his skin.

“Baek …” Minseok was trying to sooth him. “Let’s go inside, Baek.”

But Baekhyun was already hyperventilating. His eyes were unfocused, his skin was scarily pale and his lips were forming shapeless words that seemed to blend together into one long monotonous hum.

He wasn’t _there_ anymore.

“I’m calling for help,” Jongdae murmured, waiting until he received Minseok’s nod of acknowledgement before he hastened back into the house in search for his phone.

It was a quiet neighbourhood. Their manager had specifically chosen this building because it was small and inconspicuous. Nobody but their inner staff circle had known where they were. That man should never have been able to find them.

Either that meant that the information had been leaked or, more worryingly, somebody was watching them. Somebody was watching Baekhyun.

He almost dropped his phone before he finally found his way to the keypad and punched in Chanyeol’s number. His pulse was racing and there was sweat beading on his forehead and if he was this scared, he could only imagine what Baekhyun was feeling.

It was supposed to be over. They were supposed to be safe.

“Hello?”

“Chanyeol?”

The fear must have shown through in his voice because he could hear Chanyeol’s tone suddenly drop into a growl as he responded with, “What’s happened?”

“I’m not really sure,” Jongdae panted, already going about locking all the windows. He didn’t care if he was being paranoid. There was somebody in this house that he needed to protect. “This guy just showed up while we were unpacking and started talking to Baek. I didn’t hear what he said but he tried to give him a shit tonne of money and now Baek’s freaking out.”

There was a pause from the other end of the line that he barely even noticed in his haste to seal every possible entrance. He doubted that suited people stooped as low as to climb through a window but he wasn’t taking any chances with his friend’s safety.

“Jongin and I are on our way,” Chanyeol promised. “Is he still there?”

“No, he’s gone.”

“Are you safe?”

“I’m locking all the windows. Minseok-hyung’s with Baek.”

“Have you called the police?”

Jongdae’s head shot up at the sound of the front door slamming closed and Baekhyun’s heaving breaths overtaking the living room as Minseok tried everything in his limited power to calm him down.

“Can you do it on your way over here?” he whispered into the speaker. “I need to take care of Baekhyun.”

“Okay. We’ll be there in thirty.”

He hung up and lurched into the next room to see Minseok standing helplessly by the door while Baekhyun spiralled into a full-on meltdown.

He was still hyperventilating but now his tears had been added to the cocktail and he had both hands tugging brutally at his bleached blonde hair. He was still talking to himself but this time, his words were audible and his legs looked like they were going to give out any moment.

“Why is this happening? Why is this happening? I didn’t ask for this. Why is this happening to me? It’s not my fault. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask for this. Why can’t they leave me alone? Why are they always here? Why are they always here? I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t –”

“Baek …” Minseok tried but his voice merely bounced off Baekhyun’s trembling body. “Baek, do you know where you are?”

“I didn’t ask for this. Why is this happening? I didn’t ask for this. Why did this happen when I didn’t ask for this? It’s not fair. It’s not fair. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t deserve this.”

Jongdae stepped forwards, hands raised placatingly, “Baekhyun? We know you didn’t ask for this. Okay? It’s not your fault. Whatever … Whatever that man said to you …”

He glanced over at Minseok for support and saw for the first time that his hyung was holding the envelope of money. It made sense not to leave it out there in the garden but now it felt like they’d accepted it.

Whatever ‘it’ was.

“It wasn’t true, okay? None of it was true so just … let’s just … sit down. Okay? Let’s just sit down and then we can –”

He wasn’t expecting Baekhyun to suddenly lunge forwards and grab hold of his shirt. He flinched, thinking for a moment that his best friend was about to hit him but then Baekhyun sank to his knees, still clutching Jongdae’s clothing as he gazed up at him with streaming eyes.

“I’m sorry …” he sobbed. “I ruined everything. I’m so sorry.”

Jongdae dropped down in front of him. He tried to pry Baekhyun’s fingers from his shirt but he was holding on too tightly and Jongdae was shaking too violently to make a proper attempt.

“Why are you sorry?” he murmured, blinking out his first tear as Minseok joined them in their little huddle on the living room carpet. “You have nothing to be sorry for … Okay? This wasn’t your fault. None of this was your fault.”

Baekhyun raised his head, facial muscles suddenly going slack as if all emotion had been erased from his mind.

“Why weren’t you there?” he whispered, and Jongdae froze. “Why didn’t you stop me? Why didn’t you do something? You should have done something!”

Jongdae couldn’t draw breath. His lungs felt like they had simply collapsed at the sound of the questions he’d been asking himself since the moment Sehun had found that phone in the hotel lobby.

Baekhyun was right. He should have been there. He should have stopped him. He should have done something.

“Baek?” Minseok breathed, so softly that Jongdae barely heard him, as he reached up and stroked the back of Baekhyun’s head. “It’s not happening anymore. They’re in jail. Both of them. They can never do anything to you again.”

Baekhyun’s hands finally fell away from Jongdae’s shirt but his expression remained lifeless and his eyes remained glassy as the tears continued to fall even though the hyperventilating had stopped.

“Yes … They can.”

He didn’t even seem to notice his two friends exchanging a glance over the top of his head. He didn’t even seem to notice a cushion being snatched from the couch and he didn’t even react when his body was guided gently down onto the floor, cheek nestled into the pillow.

“The police are coming,” Jongdae whispered as Minseok lay down behind Baekhyun and curled an arm around his waist. “I … I should go wait for them.”

Baekhyun wouldn’t want him here. Baekhyun blamed him for not being there when he was needed most. It had been his greatest fear and he’d managed to convince himself that it was just his guilt manifesting as self-incrimination but now his suspicions had been confirmed.

He made to stand up but Minseok grabbed his wrist and pulled him back down.

“He didn’t mean it,” he mouthed, but it didn’t matter. The damage was already done.

At least, he thought it was right up until the moment that Baekhyun pried his colourless lips apart and said in a voice completely void of any and all feeling, “I’m sorry, Dae.”

Jongdae’s heart shattered right there and then.

“It’s okay. It’s … it’s okay.” He picked Baekhyun’s hand up off the carpet and caressed the back of it with his thumb. “We never should have let that guy near you in the first place, but the police will deal with him, okay?”

Baekhyun seemed to have exhausted himself entirely. The anxiety medication he’d been prescribed caused him to get tired very quickly so it wasn’t surprising that his miniature breakdown had sapped all the energy from his body.

Jongdae’s knees were starting to go numb and his friend’s accusations were still revolving around his mind but he didn’t dare move. They would have to talk about this once the police got here but, for now, it was easier just to let the chemicals in Baekhyun’s blood do their job of sedating him.

He was almost asleep when he opened his mouth and slurred the words, “I can’t testify.”

Both Minseok and Jongdae’s eyebrows shot up towards their hairlines but Minseok was the first one to speak, gently tightening his grip around Baekhyun's waist as he did.

“Why not?”

“Because if I do, they’ll tell the media that I wanted it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kairi, I hope this satisfied your need for a CBX moment. It is a little stressful but I threw some cuddling in there just for you. 
> 
> nvramirah, this is (sort of) what you asked for, too.


	19. Bribes And Blackmail

When Chanyeol and Jongin finally pulled up outside, the police had already arrived. For some completely unknown reason, Chanyeol still scaled the street as though the person who’d terrorised his best friend would be lurking in the bushes.

They were met with an officer at the door and almost thrown back out of the house until Minseok stuck his head out of the kitchen and confirmed their innocence.

“What happened?” Chanyeol hissed at his eldest hyung as they hovered awkwardly in the doorway. “Do you know who it was and why they were here?”

“Yeah,” Minseok muttered distractedly. “We know why they were here.”

Baekhyun was sitting beside Jongdae, staring religiously down at the untouched glass of water in front of him instead of the police officer with the notebook and the woman in the pantsuit who seemed most likely to be his lawyer on the opposite side of the table.

Jongdae’s hand was resting palm-up on the surface and, surprisingly, Baekhyun’s fingers were entangled with it. In Yixing’s absence, the person he seemed to have latched onto was his fellow CBX member.

“Hey, hyung,” Jongin murmured. “We’re here now, okay?”

Baekhyun nodded but he didn’t look up. His eyes were still a little red but the rest of him seemed to have been sapped of every sliver of emotion. That was probably how he was dealing with the most recent trauma.

“Baekhyun,” the officer said, ballpoint pen hovering over her notebook. “I need to know what he said to you so that we can press charges.”

Chanyeol wished he had all the information. For now, the only thing he knew was that some weirdo in a suit had showed up in a place he shouldn’t have been able to show up and said some things he shouldn’t have been able to say.

But the only thing he could do was stand with Jongin and Minseok against the wall and wait.

Jongdae gave Baekhyun’s hand a gentle squeeze and whispered some incoherent words of encouragement that actually seemed to do some good.

“He asked me if I was really Byun Baekhyun,” Baekhyun croaked, his voice scratchy and still without looking up at anyone. “He said he had something for me and tried to give me the money.”

His eyes flickered sideways and Chanyeol followed them to where the thick brown envelope was enclosed in a plastic evidence bag beside the police officer, the paper bills sticking out from between the folds.

That was a lot of money.

“He said it was compensation,” Baekhyun continued lifelessly. “For what happened to me. But he said that was only the deposit. He said I would get even more if I dropped the charges and that I should know to take a good deal when I saw it.”

Chanyeol felt his fists instinctively curling and he had to put his hands behind his back to make sure nobody noticed. He understood now that the guy must have been some kind of representative of Daehwan’s who was sent to bribe and blackmail Baekhyun into staying silent.

Not only did that psycho’s family know what their son was doing but they were actually helping him cover it up. There really was no justice in this world.

“I said I didn’t want it but he forced it into my hand and then he grabbed my neck and said that if I wasn’t going to do what he asked of me, he would make sure the whole world knew that … that …”

He stiffened slightly in his chair, grip tightening on Jongdae’s hand as his eyes blew wide at the memory of that sickening encounter.

“That I was just a … sl … slutty little homo who cried rape.”

Chanyeol heard Jongin’s sharp inhale from beside him but, other than that, the only sound his ears could process was a loud rushing. He couldn’t believe somebody could say that to another human being when they knew what had been done to them.

Baekhyun’s voice was so small when he finished his testimony.

“That was when Minseok-hyung and Jongdae came out.”

He blew out a long breath, as though he’d been refusing to let his lungs inhale for the past few minutes, and a shudder ricocheted through his body. Jongdae used his free hand to caress the back of his head in a comforting gesture that seemed to do nothing.

Both the police officer and the lawyer were scribbling down Baekhyun’s words and Chanyeol hoped they would be able to use them to take Daehwan and his family down. Bribery and blackmail were against the law. There was no way they were getting away with this.

Except, he reminded himself, they had.

Eight times before.

Apparently, this was how all those victims had been silenced. Either because they were too broke not to accept the money or because they’d been threatened into keeping their stories to themselves.

The police officer finished her notes and glanced up, “Did he say anything else, Baekhyun? Anything that would prove who he was? Did he actually say either Daehwan or Tak’s name?”

“No,” Baekhyun whispered, and the disappointment in both the lawyer and the officer’s expressions were visible. “But …”

They looked back up and even Chanyeol could feel the leap in his pulse at the thought of there being some proof to this family of psychopaths’ crimes.

“What he said …” Baekhyun continued to force out. “About … the homo stuff and … the crying r … r … erm … That was what … _he_ … said to me.”

“Who?”

“D … D …” He was trying so hard. It was soul-shattering to watch. “Dae … I can’t … I can’t say his name. Please … Please don’t make me say his name.”

His eyes were closed and the hand that wasn’t clutching Jongdae’s had come up to cover his face. If Chanyeol didn’t know that any uninvited touches would set him off, he would have thrown himself across the room and enveloped his hyung in his arms.

Baekhyun didn’t deserve this. Nobody deserved this but Baekhyun … Baekhyun _really_ didn’t deserve this.

“That’s okay, Baekhyun-ssi,” the lawyer assured him. “You don’t have to say anything else right now. We know what you mean.”

She was right. Every person in that room knew exactly what Baekhyun had been trying to tell them but somehow it felt even worse than when they hadn’t.

The man who’d been here, the man who’d infiltrated the place that Baekhyun should have felt safe, had used the same words that Daehwan had during the assault. It must have been deliberate. Chosen intentionally to throw Baekhyun off and remind him how afraid he was of the public coming to know what he’d gone through.

Intimidation of a witness. Bribery. Blackmail. Perverting the course of justice. Kidnapping. Assault and battery. Attempted murder. Rape.

So many crimes had been committed against Baekhyun in such a short space of time and the thought of no one being convicted of them was terrifying. These people had gotten away with these atrocious acts before and clearly, they believed they were going to do it again.

Before, Baekhyun had been willing to testify only because he knew it was the only way to find some closure and finally feel safe to live his life again. But now … Now, he was faced with the possibility of his secret getting out and they no longer knew which choice he would make.

If he pulled out of the entire thing, Chanyeol wouldn’t be surprised. Angry. But not surprised.

“Thank you, Baekhyun,” the officer smiled, closing her notebook and rising from her chair. “You’ve been extremely helpful. A protective detail will be placed outside so that no unauthorised personnel can come anywhere near you. I’ll be in touch.”

She nodded to each of them in turn, took the evidence bag with the money inside and left the room. They could hear her murmuring to her partner in the corridor outside before the front door opened and quickly closed.

For a few moments, the house was completely silent as Jongdae continued to carefully stroke both his thumbs over Baekhyun’s knuckles.

On their way over here, while Chanyeol had been calling the police, Jongin had gotten in touch with Yixing to let him know what was going on and that he should probably get back as soon as possible. But Jongdae seemed to be doing a pretty good job in his absence.

“Baekhyun-ssi?” the lawyer voiced cautiously. “Are you okay to discuss your case today?”

The boy nodded and Chanyeol took the police officer’s recently-vacated chair just so he could be a little closer to his friend and sooth his own anxieties. He still couldn’t believe he’d ever dared leave his side.

The case file sat in the middle of the table, gaping wide open and exposing every one of the horrors that had occurred to the world. Inside there were photos, statements, medical records, pretty much everything they would need to go to trial.

It was like a documentation of Baekhyun’s trauma and they were presenting it to him like a trophy.

“As you know,” the lawyer started sombrely. “Tak is still in custody but Daehwan’s family managed to afford the bail.”

They didn’t need to be reminded. That guy was out, walking around, free as a bird. They were lucky it wasn’t him who’d decided to show up on their doorstep and thrust a wad of cash into Baekhyun’s palm.

“He’s on strict orders not to try and contact you in any way so if we can prove that the man who showed up today is related to him, that’s a violation and we can use it to our advantage. However, the fact that your fingerprints are on the envelope may cause us some difficulty since the prosecution could claim that you accepted the bribe.”

Chanyeol wished he could slam his fist into the table in frustration but that was more than likely to do more harm than good so instead he just raked his fingers through his hair and kept his mouth shut.

Jongin and Minseok were still yet to move from their silent vigils by the sink.

“Tak is an easy prosecution,” the lawyer continued, frequently looking up at Baekhyun even though she must have known he wasn’t going to meet her eye. “He confessed on tape, the jacket in his apartment had your DNA and the GPS on his boat was deliberately disposed of. All the evidence points to his guilt. With your testimony, the jury will sentence him in a single day.”

At least there was some good news. Tak was a first-time offender and so the execution of his crimes had been sloppy and clumsy, but no less violent.

Jaeseon and the other two from the bar would provide confirmation that Baekhyun had gotten into the car, the CCTV footage at the hotel showed him beaten up and the blood in the bathroom had been photographed by forensics examiners. The court couldn’t deny that something had happened.

But that wasn’t the problem. Convicting Tak wasn’t the problem.

“Daehwan, on the other hand, is a different story.”

Every time someone dared speak his name, Baekhyun would flinch. When they’d first rescued him, it was a more violent reaction but even though it had settled down to more of a nervous twitch rather than a full-body spasm, it didn’t make it any easier to see.

“The photos on his phone,” the lawyer murmured, flicking through the file until she found the pictures of the boys on the boat. “Can’t prove he did anything except take you out on a trip. The bar’s surveillance showed you getting into his car willingly and, obviously, the hospital couldn’t find any traces of his DNA on you because of how long you spent in the water.”

Baekhyun shuddered again. The memories were visibly hammering themselves through his head and Chanyeol wanted to comfort him but he couldn’t without probably making things worse.

“His lawyer will probably try to pin the entire thing on Tak and that’s what will make his trial a lot more complicated.”

“Even with his history?” Jongin piped up in disbelief, drawing all eyes except Baekhyun’s towards him. “He’s had accusations like this before. Surely the jury can’t ignore that.”

“That’s true,” the lawyer confirmed, but her lips were still stretched in a thin, grim line. “But only one of those cases actually made it to trial and then the victim neglected to show up to testify.”

Because, just like all the others, they’d been forced into shameful silence. It was so frustrating. Anyone with a brain would look at how Baekhyun reacted to hearing Daehwan’s name and would know he was the guilty one and yet they still had to provide pages and pages of proof that could simply be tossed aside if the jury didn’t feel inclined to believe it.

“None of the previous alleged victims ever reported being approached with a bribe or threatened. Of course, that’s probably because they weren’t as opposed to accepting the money as you are, but, again, it complicates things.”

Chanyeol felt sick. And if he felt sick, he couldn’t imagine how Baekhyun felt.

Daehwan had other victims. Eight that they knew of. Probably more who’d never felt they could come forward and report him for his actions. Only one had ever made it to a courtroom and then they’d been chased away again.

They had no solid proof that Daehwan had done anything. Even if his family were prosecuted for trying to silence a witness, the defence lawyer could just claim that they’d been trying to save their son from his wrongful accusation.

This world that they lived in was a broken one with broken people who did broken things and then expected other broken people to fix those broken things.

Daehwan’s court date was earlier than Tak’s simply because his family had the money to bump him up in the queue but if he was found not guilty and released, there was no way Baekhyun would have the emotional strength to go through the entire ordeal again with Tak.

Just because it was over didn’t mean that it was ever truly going to be _over._

“Can you get him though?” Jongin interjected once more. “You’re good at your job, we all know he did it so can you get him? Can you win this case?”

They were all looking at her now. Even Baekhyun had slowly raised his eyes as he awaited her response. Detective Kim had gotten them this far but now his job was done. This woman was their only hope of ever being able to put this behind them.

Of ever being able to see Baekhyun smile again.

Because if Daehwan got away, the rest of his victims’ lives would be nothing but torture. Baekhyun would spend every day wondering if his assailant was hurting somebody else because he hadn’t been strong enough to put him away. Or if he was coming back to finish what he’d started.

And if those people released the truth to the media … Chanyeol didn’t even want to think about what would happen then.

So he looked to the lawyer, he crossed his fingers under the table and he prayed.

“I can’t make any guarantees.”

And no one was listening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments make my day and do wonders for my motivation. We're nearing the end now so thank you, all, for everything.


	20. Rain In The Shower

Yixing came back the day after Kyungsoo and Minseok left and Baekhyun would have been lying if he’d said that he wasn’t secretly relieved.

It was too confusing. People were leaving, coming, going, staying, and it wasn’t anybody’s fault – they all had personal issues to attend to and lives that they were putting on hold just for his sake – but it was comforting to know that finally all of that was over.

The people he was with now were the people he was going to stay with until this ordeal was over.

He hadn’t permitted himself to think about what would happen then.

Even though his trauma counsellor had tried to explain it to him, he still didn’t quite understand why it felt like his world was crashing down every time Yixing was out of his sight. It wasn’t nearly as bad as when he first woke up but it was … debilitating.

He got the part about Yixing being the initial thing he saw when he opened his eyes but it was almost like his body went into withdrawal every time they weren’t in the same room. He got agitated, fidgety and it infuriated as well as confused him.

It was like he was a toddler with a severe case of separation anxiety.

And he could see the flashes of hurt in the others’ eyes whenever he chose Yixing over them. It never lingered but his senses were attuned to it. He could practically smell the disappointment and betrayal that leaked from them every time they were rejected.

Baekhyun hated himself for it. Hated that he was so co-dependent all of a sudden. Hated that sometimes he couldn’t bear for them to touch him, speak to him or even look at him. Hated that he had turned on Jongdae and screamed innately hurtful words in his face when he’d only been trying to help.

He’d apologised. Over and over and over and over again. And Jongdae said that it was okay, that it was just a symptom of the trauma and that he shouldn’t blame himself for his inability to keep his emotions in check, but that didn’t make it okay.

That made it worse.

He didn’t deserve to be forgiven for the things he’d done.

Cancelling their tour, using up all the military members’ leave, sending them all spiralling into a fit of sleep-deprived paranoia, refusing to talk to them and sometimes even shoving them away when they tried to hug him.

All because he’d been stupid enough to get in that car without questioning what kind of consequences it would hold for him.

“Hang on. I’m almost done.”

The soft murmur from behind made him jump slightly before he managed to push down the rising anxiety and remind himself where he was.

Count to ten, look at the things around you, touch something if need be, breathe in, smell the air. Does it smell of salt? No. Are you in the water? No. Are you cold? No. Is the world tilting like it was on that boat? No. So are you there anymore? No. 

“Sorry,” Yixing whispered. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Baekhyun just hummed to show his acknowledgement. He was trying to use more words these days but they just never seemed to come to him. He never seemed to know what to say or what he was even allowed to say.

He didn’t want to slip up and upset them or make them believe in any way that he wasn’t inordinately grateful for everything they’d sacrificed to be here with him in his time of weakness.

“I swear this stuff is going to soak through the gloves,” Yixing continued, muttering almost to himself because he knew it was more comforting for Baekhyun that way.

They were sitting in the bathroom, the Chinese boy on the closed toilet seat and the Korean one on the floor with a towel wrapped around his shoulders and his hair slicked with liquid black.

It had been time to dye it. The roots had been growing through to the point where it almost looked like some kind of botched ombre attempt and the stiffness of the fake blonde had been starting to drive him insane.

Plus, the trial was fast approaching, and they’d all agreed to have black hair by the time it rolled around, just to make sure that everybody knew how serious they were about taking these guys to jail.

Baekhyun shivered instinctively.

He didn’t like thinking about the trial unless he absolutely had to.

_All he’ll ever be known as is the slutty little homo who cried rape._

That voice never left his head. Those words were imprinted into his brain stem, torturing him with their presence and reminding him of their malice every time he tried to close his eyes and go to sleep.

Right now, Daehwan was out there. He wasn’t locked up, he wasn’t in handcuffs, he was walking free and if he wanted to, he could march right up their garden path and throttle Baekhyun in his sleep.

“Hyung?”

His own voice surprised him. He hadn’t thought he was still capable of ordinary human speech as it felt so long since he’d last used it.

Yixing paused, his gloved fingers freezing in the tangles of his friend’s matted mane of coloured chemicals, “Yeah?”

“How long was I out there?”

He knew he shouldn’t be asking these questions. He shouldn’t even be broaching the subject when he didn’t have to. It would just make Yixing sad and guilty and Yixing didn’t deserve to be sad or guilty. Baekhyun did, though.

Yet, even though he was painfully aware of the way his hyung seemed to sag slightly from behind him, he couldn’t help the deep-rooted desire in his gut from spreading upwards, reaching out its thin tendrils for any chance of an answer.

He remembered the rain, the wind, the water, the hunger, the cold and the pain. He just didn’t remember how long it had gone on for. He’d tried to count sunrises but it was hard when his mind was so inebriated with hypothermia.

He knew he’d passed out at some point and then, during that time, he’d been pulled onto a boat and taken to hospital but he had no recollection of any of it. It was just stuff that the doctor and the lawyer and Yixing had told him.

He didn’t even know the name of the person who’d rescued him.

Yixing’s hands disappeared from his hair and he tensed, wondering if he’d pushed too far and upset the only person who could ever truly calm him down when he was in a crisis.

But then there was a soft, sad sigh.

“Three days, Baek. You were out there for three days. Chanyeol was the one who pulled you out.”

Baekhyun just nodded. He didn’t know what else to do.

Three days didn’t sound like much at all. Back when he was a newly-debuted idol, he’d probably slept for longer than three days. Or gone without food for longer than three days. Three days felt like nothing.

But when he’d been in that water, clinging to the metal that bit at his skin and repeating to himself that somebody would find him, that he wasn’t going to die like this … It had felt like years.

“Hey,” Yixing murmured, wriggling out from behind Baekhyun and lowering himself down onto the floor beside him. “You … You know you can talk about it, right? If you want to.”

Could he though? And did he?

Every time the lawyer came round and he had to share a little bit more of his story, somebody would get overwhelmed and would have to leave the room. Usually it was Jongin. Sometimes it was Chanyeol. Occasionally it was both of them. But it was always someone.

When he talked about how broken and twisted he was inside, he spread that brokenness and that twistedness onto them. He tainted them with his poison. He made them see the evils of the world and he put pictures into their heads when they didn’t deserve to have them there.

He could talk to his psychologist. She would listen and jot down notes and offer little anecdotes that sounded sweet but were totally useless on a practicality level, but she was paid to do that. It was her job. She got her salary from listening to his whining.

She didn’t really care. Not like Yixing did. Not like his members did.

If he was going to discuss the details of what had happened to him in order to get the load off his chest and clear his head, he wanted it to be with them, and yet they were the exact people with whom he couldn’t do that.

It was a vicious cycle and it made his head hurt just to think about it.

“I …”

His voice kept cracking from lack of use. He couldn’t make eye contact. He could never make eye contact anymore. He would just see the disappointment, the pity, the disgust.

He would see that reproachful flash of guilt that seemed to never leave Jongdae’s gaze anymore. He, Baekhyun, had put it there when he’d blamed his best friend for his trauma and he, Baekhyun, was never going to be able to take that back.

“I … Um … I … I …”

A hiss of frustration escaped his lips and he slammed his fist against his thigh just to be able to release some of the pent-up fury he held for himself.

Another development he hated: he was angry all the time.

“I can’t.”

“Okay,” Yixing whispered in that same gentle reassuring tone Baekhyun had heard all that time ago in the hospital. “Whenever you’re ready, every one of us is here.”

Ready for what? Ready to spread the story that would label him for what he was: a stupid, pathetic little coward who could do nothing more than curl up and snivel all day long? Ready to watch the love that his friends had for him fade as soon as they heard how royally idiotic he was?

Ready to lose all the respect and dignity he had left?

No. He would never be ready. And, as far as he was concerned, neither would they.

“You good to wash the dye out on your own?” Yixing asked, steadily peeling off the soiled gloves and depositing them in the trash as he got to his feet. “It will stain the shower black but you have to make sure to get it all or it’ll burn your scalp.”

How could he talk to him like he was still the same person he used to know? How could he act like everything was fine and dandy and normal when it really wasn’t? How could he even look at the repulsive blob of insecurity and self-loathing and not recoil in disgust?

Why were they all trying so hard to put Daehwan and Tak in jail when Baekhyun had practically handed himself over to them, gift-wrapped and with a bow on top?

But he couldn’t voice any of that and so he just nodded. Like he always did.

Yixing washed the gloopy residue from his fingernails, warned his little brother not to lock the door and then left the room, abandoning the boy with the thoughts and feelings he wished he could rip from his mind.

It was only when he was carefully removing his clothes, trying hard not to get any dye on them, that he realised this was the first time he was actually showering since … everything.

Before now, he’d taken baths simply because they were easier and the doctors felt safer letting him have one unattended. At least, in a bath, his blood pressure couldn’t plummet and he wouldn’t bang his head against the wall.

The bruises on his body were healing but he still couldn’t look at them. They were toxic to his eyes. He remembered how each one had felt when it was planted there. He could see the fists and the feet and the teeth that had done it.

It occurred to him that, even if the wounds closed up and disappeared altogether, he would probably still feel them for the rest of his life.

That was how trauma worked.

The water was pleasantly warm when he stepped beneath it but not scorching enough to irritate his abused skin. It worked at the knots in his muscles that had formed from too much slouching and soothed the aches in his bones.

He ran his fingers through his hair, feeling the dye slowly starting to seep from his roots and stain the water pitch black. It reminded him a little of a horror movie, jetted rivulets rolling down his body and pooling at his feet.

It scared him sometimes. Being underwater, even if he wasn’t actually submerged. The feeling of it against his skin, sloshing around him, making him float in a void of nothingness without anything to support his feet.

He’d been so close to drowning out there. The salt had gotten in his eyes, ears, mouth, nose. Sometimes he could still taste it on his tongue. Sometimes he could still feel the waves lapping against his body.

Genuinely, he had no idea how he’d managed to find that buoy and not die while he was swimming towards it.

And to hold on for three days … where had that strength even come from?

This water was warm, though, and that’s what made it safe.

Until somebody somewhere else in the house flushed a toilet or turned on the sink and the dodgy plumbing turned Baekhyun’s heated relaxation into icy terror.

It was shockingly cold, drawing a gasp of shock from deep within his gut as his spine instinctively curved to try and get away from it. He looked up to see what was going on, the water hit his face and that was all it took.

Rain. Freezing rain. Dribbling into his eyes, mingling with his tears, drenching him when he was already drenched and pounding mercilessly against his shoulders and neck as he tried desperately to shield himself from its wrath.

He’d screamed. He could remember it now. He’d screamed for it to stop. For God to listen just this once. For whatever holy deity residing up there in the sky to spare him from drowning in a little bit of rain.

He’d screamed.

He could still hear it.

Or was that real?

Was he actually screaming?

Feet slipping, he threw out his arms to catch himself and felt them connect harshly with the walls on either side. The last time he checked, the sea didn’t have any walls.

In the back of his mind, he knew he was in the shower and not the ocean and it was that little sliver of rationality that gave him the clarity of mind to reach for the door. If he could tumble out onto the bathroom floor then the rain would stop.

Everything would stop.

Except he slipped again and, this time, he wasn’t able to prevent himself from falling. Hard.

Miniature waves dancing around him, leaping over his legs as he floundered for control over his own limbs. His struggles only succeeded in causing him to slide down the wall until he was almost on his back at the bottom of the shower, the water licking at his chin.

He could still hear the screaming.

It no longer mattered to him that the temperature had once again risen. All that mattered was that he was trapped, panicking, swallowing fluids whenever he tried to gasp for air and unable to escape the torrent that continued pouring down on top of him.

The ironic humiliation of drowning in his own shower didn’t even occur to him because, in his mind, this was the sea and any minute now, his lungs were going to shut down.

A cold blast of air struck him side-on.

Huge, tree-branch-like arms clamped around his ribcage.

The base of his spine struck the cubicle threshold as he was dragged backwards.

The water was shut off.

It was quiet except for his own panting and the gentle shushes of whoever was holding him as somebody wrestled his quivering body into the biggest and fluffiest towel they had on offer.

He opened his eyes.

Chanyeol’s terrified face swam above him, his hair, skin and clothes all sopping wet from diving into the shower to rescue the stupid damsel from the oh-so-scary cold water.

It seemed only fitting, Baekhyun thought as he was bundled against his best friend’s chest and clamped there with unnecessary force, that the person who’d saved him the first time would be the one to save him again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> graciewrites9, if you're still reading this, this was what I came up with in response to your request. I hope it meets your expectations :)


	21. The World Will Know

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://petition.parliament.uk/archived/petitions/104639
> 
> If you live in the UK, please sign this petition to make it so that trans people can identify by their correct gender without having to go through court, multiple psychiatric evaluations and two years of being forced to live in the wrong body just to "prove" that their "condition" is not "a phase."
> 
> If you don't live in the UK, please support the hashtag #uktransrights and promote the petition to those who do. Thank you for listening

“Do you think you can tell us what happened?”

“I don’t know.”

Humiliation didn’t even begin to cover it.

He was sitting on the living room couch, face in his hands. Yixing was beside him. Chanyeol was in the armchair on the other side of the coffee table. He was wearing his pyjamas and one of Jongin’s hoodies in an attempt to make himself feel as small as possible.

Because he’d almost drowned in his own fucking shower.

There was nothing anyone had ever said or done that was more pathetic than that. He was so fucked in the head that he couldn’t even have a wash without revisiting the events of that night and completely freaking out.

The fact that he’d needed Chanyeol to actually rescue him from less than three inches of water just made it a million times worse. Sehun and Jongin had been in the doorway, too. He was the hyung and yet they’d seen him like _that._

Was this his life now? Being reminded of his trauma every time he stood under a faucet or touched a drop of water? Who the fuck was scared of _water_? And what happened if he ever got caught in the rain? Would he start flopping around on the ground then, too?

Why did things have to go this way? Why did this have to happen to him? Why couldn’t it have been someone else? How could he even wish this on someone else? Why was every second just as painful as the next and why did he never get a moment of peace?

Yixing was stroking a hand up and down his back in a comforting gesture and Chanyeol was watching him with wide and worried eyes. They probably thought he was broken beyond repair and he certainly didn’t blame them.

“Was it the water?” Yixing asked cautiously. “I’m sorry. I should have stayed to help you wash it out.”

“Help me wash it out …” Baekhyun repeated in disbelief, shaking his head and smirking bitterly in spite of himself. “Is this how it’s going to be now? I can’t do one simple thing without somebody holding my fucking hand?”

He was so angry and he couldn’t even figure out why. It wasn’t because of Yixing or Chanyeol or Jongdae or any of them and yet they were the ones being forced to take the brunt of it.

It wasn’t fair. They shouldn’t have to be strapped down with him on this sinking ship. Maybe some part of him just wanted them to leave and never come back.

“Baek, this is the recovery,” Yixing tried to sooth him. “No one’s expecting you to suddenly pretend like nothing happened. It’s going to take some time.”

“How long?” Baekhyun spat, leaping up off the couch and violently scrubbing at his newly-blackened hair. “How long am I going to be so … so goddamn pathetic? I’m a grown adult! It’s been almost a month! Why can’t I just move on?”

It was beyond frustrating. There was nothing he wanted more than to forget that night but forgetting seemed to be the one thing his brain was incapable of doing. He wanted to skip this stupid recovery and go straight to the part where he could just be a normal functioning human being again.

“Hyung …” Chanyeol started, looking as if he wanted to stand up, too.

They were scared of him. They were scared of talking to him, of touching him, of even being in the same room as him. They were scared they would set him off or be the next one to receive some kind of insulting misplaced blame.

This trauma and the monstrosity it had turned him into hadn’t just torn him apart. It had torn his entire family apart, too. What were the chances that they stayed together and continued to perform in front of live audiences after this?

If he was stronger, if he’d just said ‘no’ when he’d had the chance, if he was capable of pulling himself together and not acting like a fucking child then maybe they could have gotten through this.

But he was weak. And they deserved so much better.

“You survived something … awful. Stuff like that sticks. The fact that it’s still affecting you doesn’t say anything about how resilient you are. It’s just your brain struggling to learn how it’s supposed to handle what happened to you.”

Baekhyun ignored him because he didn’t want to listen. Blaming himself was one of the only things he was confident in. Everything else felt like it was crumbling to dust but he could always rely on the deep-seated hatred he had for himself to stay the same.

Everything was changing even though the only thing he was praying for was that it would just go back to how it used to be.

In less than a week’s time, he was going to be confronted with Lee Daehwan. He was going to have to look that man in the eye and talk about what he’d done to him in front of well over a dozen people.

And he didn’t even know if it would work. He didn’t even know if Daehwan would go to jail. He had enough money to pay off the entire jury if he wanted to, but the fact that the only evidence was Baekhyun’s testimony meant that he probably wouldn’t need to go that far.

“I’m going to bed,” he grunted, storming from the room before either of them could say a word.

He despised the person he’d become. The person Daehwan and Tak had turned him into when they thought that they could take what they wanted without asking and expected to just be able to get away with it.

Living through it once was hard enough but now he had to do it again. In front of the entire world. Because as soon as he stepped on that stand, Daehwan’s twisted little family would tell the entire world that their favourite idol was just the slutty little homo who cried rape.

Eyes burning for the hundredth time that day, he burst into the room that had been assigned to him and flung himself face-down onto the mattress.

Even this – the place that was supposed to be a safe haven for him – was just another reminder of his cowardly selfishness.

There weren’t enough rooms for each of them to have their own and yet that was exactly what Baekhyun had been given. The others had to share. Jongdae slept on the fucking floor. They kept sacrificing things for him and he just spat right back in their faces.

If the fans could see him now, they would be disgusted. If Daehwan could see him now, he would laugh.

His phone began to ring and he heaved himself up onto his elbows with a sigh of soggy resignation. He hadn’t even realised that his eyes had started to leak until he tried to read the number that was flashing up on the screen.

He’d bought a new phone. The old one brought back too many memories and so he’d ditched it. Therefore, it was unsurprising to see the ID of whoever was trying to contact him labelled as ‘Unknown’.

Under any other circumstances, he wouldn’t have answered it. It could be any number of people from a prank call, a voice phisher, a salesperson, a reporter or an overly obsessive fan and he wanted absolutely nothing to do with a single one of them.

But the fact that he had a new phone made this time different. Junmyeon had just finished basic training and so the caller could be him. Or it could be his lawyer trying to set up another meeting for them to discuss the trial.

So, he answered.

“Do not ignore this warning because it’ll be your last. If I see you in that courtroom two weeks from now, I will not hesitate to contact the press and tell them just how desperate you are to send an innocent man to jail. The entire world will know. And remember, Baekhyun … No one likes the slutty little homo who cried rape.”

The call ended with a _click_ followed by a long droning monotone and yet Baekhyun couldn’t move a single muscle. He still had the phone to his ear, he still wasn’t blinking, he still couldn’t even blink.

That was the same guy.

The one in the suit.

The one who’d tried to give him the money.

That guy had his number. That guy knew how to contact him. That guy was threatening him yet again. That guy was a direct link to Lee Daehwan and just the mere sound of his voice was enough to send Baekhyun’s mind hurtling back in time.

He could see that face looming above him. He could see the irritation in the eyes. He could feel the hands on his wrists. Even now, he could run his tongue over his back teeth and feel the gap that had been left there by one particularly brutal punch. He could taste the blood on his lips.

“No!”

The sound left him in breathless whisper and the spell was broken.

He dropped the phone like it had burned him – because, honestly, it felt as if it had – and scrambled off the bed so frantically that he tripped and almost fell flat on his ass. The device continued to sit there, completely harmless, as if it hadn’t just terrified the living daylights out of its new owner.

Baekhyun had no doubt that if he had the guts to call that number back, he would find that it no longer existed. He should contact the police, scream for Yixing, hide in the closet with his hands over his ears and his eyes screwed shut but what good would any of that do?

Daehwan was going to find him regardless of how many precautions he took to protect himself.

He knew where he lived, he knew his phone number, he wasn’t afraid of approaching him through other people. What if he tried to hurt him? Have him killed? Shut him up for good? What if they attacked one of the others the next time that they left the house?

How could he go through with testifying if it was putting him and his friends in danger? If the story got out, it wouldn’t just ruin Baekhyun’s career. It would ruin all of them. And what if he did testify but Daehwan was found not guilty? Then it would all have been for nothing.

Daehwan would come for him in person.

A strangled sob left his lips and he clamped a hand over his mouth to silence himself, sliding into a puddle of hopelessness on his bedroom floor.

He was trapped. He was never going to be able to escape. Daehwan and Tak were going to walk free and then they would track him down and they would beat the holy hell out of him for daring to try and defeat them.

Maybe he should just get it over with and cut his wrists. But that would hurt. And one of his members would have to find him bleeding out on the floor. They would never get that image out of their head. He couldn’t do that to them.

Why had he held onto that buoy? It would have been so much better for every single one of them if he’d just let go and drowned. Then he wouldn’t have to go through this and his members could move on without him.

Right now, they were stuck here in this quicksand alongside him and he was clinging to each and every one of them, forcing them to sink deeper and deeper because he was too selfish to die alone.

Clamping both hands over his mouth in an attempt to smother the sound as much as possible, he screamed until his throat was hoarse and his lungs were on the brink of bursting.

Tears rolled down his cheeks, dripped off his nose, soaked through the material of Jongin’s hoodie. He pitched forwards and pressed his forehead into the carpet, still with his legs folded beneath him as he continued to shriek into the void.

It wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair that Daehwan had enough money to buy off whoever stood in his way of what he wanted. It wasn’t fair that Tak had snapped so violently and taken it out on him. It wasn’t fair that Daehwan had done the exact same thing to so many other people and …

So many other people.

Baekhyun raised his head. He would have been lying if he’d said he wasn’t absolutely terrified at the thought of what he was about to do but there was nothing left for him to lose.

If the world was going to find out anyway then surely it would be better to take control of it now rather than waiting for somebody else to do it for him.

And those men had to go to jail. For as long as possible.

His knees were like jelly as he got up off the floor and crawled back onto the bed. His hands were shaking as he picked up the phone and fought the urge to fling it into the wall as hard as possible.

He was still crying. The bruises on his face hadn’t quite faded. The image that stared back at him when he turned on the self-camera was both hideous and pitiful, two things he did not want to be, but he had to do this now.

If he didn’t, he would chicken out, and people were more likely to listen to him if he looked as if he’d been through … what he’d been through.

He propped the phone up on top of the pillow, leaning it against the headboard so that he could sit cross-legged in the centre of the bed and still be seen on the screen. The lighting was bad. He was trembling. It didn’t matter.

Now. It had to be now. He couldn’t allow himself to hesitate because then he would start second-guessing everything. He had to do this before his traumatised mind told him that it was going to kill him if he dared try something so shockingly stupid.

He reached forwards and started the recording.

“My name is Byun Baekhyun. I’m a professional singer in the Korean idol group, EXO.”

He was surprised that his voice didn’t seem to be breaking even when the rest of him was shattered so far beyond repair that not even the pieces themselves would be able to tell where they’d been before.

“Three weeks ago, my company released a statement saying that I’d been missing for three days but that I was safe and recovering. That isn’t true. I’m not safe and, because of that, I can’t recover.”

A small voice in the back of his head started asking him what the hell he thought he was doing but he pushed it down. This wasn’t just about him anymore. It never really had been.

“In truth, I was attacked at The Wolfhound bar in Gijang-eup, Gijang-gun, Busan by a man named Lee Daehwan and his friend, Han Tak. What they did to me is something that I will never be able to forget for the rest of my life, but there’s still a chance that they won’t go to jail.”

He couldn’t go into any more detail. He just … He just couldn’t. He still wasn’t ready to talk to Yixing about it, let alone the rest of the internet. The first time he would be able to say it out loud was going to have to be in that courtroom.

“I wasn’t Lee Daehwan’s first victim but I’m determined to ensure that I was his last. For that to happen, he needs to be put behind bars and for _that_ to happen, I need help. I know that there are people out there – lots of them – who’ve suffered because of this man and I know that I don’t deserve to ask anything of you but please … _please,_ hear me out.”

Maybe it was selfish. He was well aware of what those people had been through but they’d managed to put it behind them. They might have even moved on by now. By making this video, he could be hauling them right back into that world of psychological torture.

“In order to get this guy put away, I need to give a testimony but that might not be enough. He knows how to do what he wants without leaving evidence. That’s why I could really use the help of the other people who’ve been victimised because of him.”

His throat clogged up. He coughed.

“I know he threatened you. I know he tried to pay for your silence. I know you were afraid and I know that this must be so painful for you to relive but we have a chance to punish him for what he did to us. If we waste it, he’s just going to keep hurting people the same way he hurt us.”

_All he’ll ever be known as is the slutty little homo who cried rape._

He closed his eyes and gave his head a slight shake in an attempt to rid it of the memories. Another few tears dribbled tentatively over his skin and he pawed at them with the overly long sleeve of Jongin’s hoodie.

“You don’t have to show your faces. He doesn’t have to know that you spoke out against him. The only case that’s being tried is mine so you don’t have to do anything more than give a statement. I … I know it’s not fair … I know it’s not okay … Trust me, I know …”

It was getting increasingly difficult to breathe. He still couldn’t believe he was doing this. He was throwing himself under the bus and for what? This might not even work.

“But I can’t do this on my own. Please …Please help me put the man who did this to me behind bars. Please help me show him that I’m not going to lie down and let him win. Please help me stop him from ever doing this to anyone else. Please … If he’s done to you what he did to me, call the police. Report him. Don’t let him get away with ruining someone else’s life.”

Choking on his own tears and unable to see straight in front of him, he ended the recording, loaded it up onto his messages app and sent it to his lawyer with the caption:

_If you approve, send it to every broadcasting station. I want the world to know_

He turned off his phone, lay down and sobbed until he passed out. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're almost at the end now and there's a new story on the horizon


	22. A Symbol Of Strength

Sometimes there’s a feeling. An undeniable sensation that grows and grows until it’s categorically impossible to ignore. Incontestable proof that the most unpleasant day of a person’s life is about to begin.

None of them had been expecting it. None of them had even considered the possibility that Baekhyun could do something like that but when they turned on the news the day after the shower meltdown, there was their friend on the screen.

They sat, all of them, in stunned silence as they listened to the pleas and the sobs but it wasn’t until the numbers of the hotline flashed up that any of them found the sense of mind to move.

For the last twenty-four hours, Baekhyun had been completely silent. He hadn’t left his room, he’d refused to speak to anybody but Yixing and said boy had only just managed to convince him to eat a single meal. They’d thought it was just the depression or the fear of the trial.

Sehun had believed that the worst day of his life was when he’d awoken to find his hyung missing because of his negligence, but now he knew otherwise.

This. This day right here. This was the worst of his life.

Baekhyun was pacing the small room they’d been shunted into, wringing his hands and repeatedly fidgeting with the tie around his neck as if it were too tight. Sweat was beading on his hairline and he was almost as pale as the day they pulled him from the sea.

He was spiralling, panicking, and the only thing Sehun could do was sit back and watch. Even Yixing seemed to be stumped of words to say.

Everyone had known that this day was coming but the fact that it was now here was something they somehow hadn’t managed to prepare themselves for. To some extent, it still felt like a nightmare. One exceedingly long, excruciatingly painful nightmare.

Daehwan was in this building. Sehun was still trying to come to terms with it.

Daehwan, _the_ Daehwan, the reason Baekhyun was in this much pain to begin with, was just a few walls away, undoubtedly wearing a suit that cost more than Sehun’s car and a disgustingly smug smirk on his face. 

Sehun had caught a glimpse of him just before he, Yixing and Baekhyun were led into a side room by the court officials. He’d looked so calm and collected, as if he believed he was just going to walk right out of those doors at the end of the day like nothing happened.

It was terrifying to think that he might be right.

Sehun checked his watch. They’d been in this room for almost an hour. That meant the opening statements should be approaching their end. It would be Baekhyun’s turn soon.

“Hey, Baek?” Yixing called gently from where he and Sehun were sitting side by side on the couch. Baekhyun didn’t even look at them. “Baek, can you hear me out for a sec?”

“I’m listening,” came the constricted croak, but its owner continued to pace and fidget anyway.

“I know you don’t want me to say this,” Yixing continued carefully, clearly on the lookout for any sign of a breakdown. “But whatever happens today, we love you and we’re proud of you.”

Sehun nodded to show his support but it wouldn’t have mattered if he hadn’t. Baekhyun was still refusing to raise his head or even acknowledge that anything had been said.

“Even if it doesn’t go the way that you want it to out there, I want you to know that you did everything you could to put this man in jail. It was incredibly selfless to make that appeal on the news and not only did it show all the other people who were hurt by this son of a bitch that there was a chance they could get justice but it also showed _him_ that he wasn’t going to win this time. And I think that’s incredible. I don’t know anyone else who would have the guts to do that.”

There was a moment where Baekhyun didn’t look as if he’d heard the speech that had been sent his way but then he stopped his mindless laps of the room and glanced up at them like he’d only just realised they were there.

“What if I fuck it up?” he whispered, and those six simple syllables broke Sehun’s heart. 

Baekhyun shouldn’t have to do this. There shouldn’t have to be a trial in the first place. Anyone who spent five minutes with Daehwan knew that he was guilty. Putting the victim up on the stand and subjecting him to cross examinations and ridicule was only adding to the trauma of the whole affair.

“You’re not going to fuck it up,” Sehun promised. “The fact that you’re even here right now means that you’re not fucking it up. So long as you remember what the lawyer told you and you tell the truth …”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence because at that moment, as if she’d been listening for her cue on the other side of the door, the lawyer walked in. She had her hair pinned back in a bun so tight that it looked as if it would rip her scalp off but when she smiled, it was warm and reassuring.

It was then that Sehun realised how lucky they’d been to find her.

“We’ve got about ten minutes,” she said as she closed the door. “How are you feeling?”

Baekhyun looked at her, then at Yixing and then at the floor. He raked his fingers through his sleek black hair and exhaled very slowly. It was obvious that he wasn’t feeling well at all but none of them had expected anything different.

“I wasn’t able to tell you before due to confidential reasons,” the lawyer went on. “But now that the evidence has been submitted, I can.”

Sehun’s heart leapt. They’d been waiting for this. They’d been praying for this conversation to come and they’d been begging for the answer to their question to be what they’d hoped it would.

“After the appeal, the hotline received over a hundred calls.” Baekhyun’s eyes bulged comically. “Obviously, most of them were fake as we expected they would be. They retracted their fabricated stories as soon as they were told they wouldn’t get to meet you.”

The world was sick. People were sick. Thinking they could take advantage of a situation like this. Thinking it was okay to lie about being assaulted just so they could get close to their favourite idol.

“However,” the lawyer continued, and that was when Sehun felt the first tendrils of hope starting to crawl through the mouth of the tunnel. “There were thirteen individuals who were able to provide an accurate description of Daehwan – and Tak, for that matter – and provide evidence that they suffered a similar attack to you.”

Sehun was numb. He’d been numb a lot these days but now he was _numb-_ numb. 

In Daehwan’s short life, he’d been indicted on eight counts of sexual assault, all of which had been dropped when the victims had been threatened or bribed into silence. But now there were thirteen victims, and still there could be more who hadn’t been able to pick up the phone.

That man was a monster who had wrecked so many lives and now they had the opportunity and the ammunition with which to take him down for good. The idea was just so surreal.

“Are they all here today?” Baekhyun rasped, barely even audible. If it were possible, he looked even paler than before the lawyer had walked in. “Are they testifying?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Sehun’s heart sank. Really, they shouldn’t have gotten their hopes up in the first place. Calling a hotline and reporting an assault was one thing but actually facing the assaulter and talking about it in court was another.

“Because Daehwan is only being tried for what he did to you, testimonies from other victims wouldn’t be helpful as evidence to prove the defendant’s guilt, only as foundations to support your story. Walking into that courtroom today would just be an unnecessary trauma for them.”

Baekhyun visibly deflated. A droplet of sweat rolled down his brow but his hands were shaking too badly for him to wipe it away. He looked as if he might throw up at any second and Sehun found himself glancing around for a trashcan.

“Each of them has provided us with a written statement, though.”

Wait … What?

“A … A written …?”

She was smiling. The lawyer was smiling as she nodded her head. It was a sad kind of smile, a pitying kind of smile, but a smile nonetheless.

“They didn’t want their identities to be revealed and so my firm visited each of them and got their stories down on paper. We’ve submitted the transcripts as evidence. They’re going to be read out on the second day of the trial. And I’m not technically allowed to say this, but I’m confident in their ability to get our point across.”

Sehun was actually finding it difficult to breathe. He could only imagine what must be going on in Baekhyun’s head and in his lungs but if it was possible to hear another human being’s heart, he would’ve been able to hear Baekhyun’s.

He’d done it. His words and his courage had been enough to convince thirteen traumatised, terrified people to come forward and expose their darkest secrets. He’d done what Daehwan had gone to so many lengths to prevent.

The battle wasn’t over yet but it certainly felt as if they were winning.

Baekhyun’s hands and knees were trembling. He was facing the floor, pupils zapping backwards and forwards in his skull, fingertips digging into the skin of his forehead. It was like he was struggling to believe that any of this was real.

The lawyer’s eyes flickered down to her watch and she pushed her glasses slightly higher up her nose. That was when Sehun knew that it was time. All of this pain and suffering he’d watched unfold in front of him over the last few weeks had come down to this.

“Baekhyun-ssi … We have to go in now.”

Baekhyun’s head snapped up so quickly that it probably gave him whiplash and suddenly, where before there had been virtually no emotion, there was now too much.

“I – I – I … I’m not ready,” he stuttered frantically, stumbling backwards several steps and shaking his head. “I … I need more time … I … He’s out there … I – I … I’m not ready to face him yet. I’m not ready!”

Yixing surged forwards, grabbing Baekhyun’s shoulders and shaking him with double the force that any of them had dared use on him in the last month. Sehun wondered what he was thinking, manhandling a rape victim like that, but it seemed to do the trick.

Baekhyun sucked in the breath he’d been fighting for and looked up into his hyung’s eyes.

“You are ready,” Yixing growled without relinquishing his hold. “Remember why you’re doing this. Remember what all of this has been for.”

A tear drizzled down Baekhyun’s cheek. His bottom lip quivered. But he didn’t break the contact he had with Yixing’s gaze.

“Why did you hold on?” Yixing murmured, suddenly dropping his voice from hard and firm to soft and gentle. “When you were out there in the water, why did you hold on? Why didn’t you give up?”

“I … I wanted to live.”

“And?”

“I wanted them to get punished.”

“Exactly,” Yixing nodded, reeling the shivering body in for a hug. “You’ve been so strong for so long and you fought so hard to get back to us so you could send this man to jail. Well, this is it, Baek. This is what you fought for. This is the moment that will make all of that pain worth it.”

It was moments like these that Sehun understood why Baekhyun had chosen Yixing to imprint on.

Not only had he been the first solid comfort the victim had received after his ordeal but he was also the pillar in their team. He always knew what to say and what to do. The fact that the company had kept him away from them for so long had done them more harm than they cared to admit but then when Baekhyun needed his family more than he’d ever needed anything in his life, he opened his eyes, and there was Yixing.

The bond that had been forged in that hospital room was one that was never going to be broken and Sehun would have been lying if he said he hadn’t envied it at some point, but it had never been about him. He wasn’t the protagonist of this story.

“We have to go now,” the lawyer pushed gently.

Baekhyun drew back from Yixing’s embrace and it felt like he’d somehow transformed into a completely different person while he’d had his face buried in his hyung’s chest.

His eyes were no longer blotchy. His cheeks had a tint of colour to them. He was no longer sweating bullets and for the first time since he’d woken up this morning, his hands weren’t shaking.

He was preparing himself for the worst day of his life, and yet it no longer felt like it was going to be the worst. 

Sehun trailed at the back of the procession, feeling a little like a spectator in what was possible the most epic power move of all time. Yixing was just in front of him, the lawyer was a couple of paces ahead and Baekhyun was at the front with his shoulders back and his chin up.

The doors swung open and Sehun felt the wave of evil that emanated from within the courtroom but Baekhyun didn’t even falter. He followed the lawyer to the front of the room and sat down with her behind the table.

Not once did he look at anything other than what was straight ahead of him.

Yixing and Sehun slipped into the pews and found their spots next to Jongdae, Jongin and Chanyeol. Jongdae shot them a sharp questioning gaze and Yixing inclined his head once. It was enough for all of them to understand: Baekhyun was more than ready for this.

The trial was closed, meaning there were no reporters or random members of the public loitering in the audience.

It was to protect Baekhyun’s dignity and his privacy and to prevent anyone from finding out that the statement the company had realised about their artist suffering a physical assault was false. 

The jury was humming with chatter. The judge was absent from the podium. The other side of the pews were empty save for a middle-aged couple who Sehun could only assume were Daehwan’s parents.

And then there was Daehwan himself.

His table was adjacent to Baekhyun’s and his lawyer seemed to be trying to talk to him but it would have been clear even to a blind man that he wasn’t listening. He was glaring across the room at the person who would become his last victim in this lifetime, and Baekhyun wasn’t even sparing him a glance.

If the atmosphere wasn’t so tense, Sehun would have chuckled.

The door behind the podium opened and the judge walked in. Everybody stood until he’d seated himself and then returned to their own seats when they were told. As soon as he opened his mouth, the stenographer’s wrinkled old fingers flew into motion.

“Court is now in session. We shall progress to the next stage of the trial: testimonies. The prosecution has the floor.”

Baekhyun’s lawyer got to her feet and Sehun hadn’t realised he’d been holding his breath.

“I would like to call Byun Baekhyun to the stand.”

It was possible to feel Yixing’s muscles tense from beside him as Baekhyun slowly rose from his chair and strode to the witness box. His movements were still the littlest bit shaky but no one who didn’t know him as well as themselves would have noticed that.

When he turned to the bailiff, Sehun caught a glimpse of his face. His jaw was set, his eyes were hard. He looked more determined than any of them had ever seen him before in his life.

“Please raise your right hand.” The hand that made it level with his shoulder was steady as a rock. “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?”

“I swear.”

His voice was steady, too.

“Take a seat.”

Baekhyun lowered himself into the chair on the raised platform and took a deep breath. Sehun saw him glance down at the glass of water that had been set up for him but he didn’t take it. It would only prove how nervous he was.

He caught his lawyer’s eye. She smiled, and he managed to twist his lips in return.

And then he looked at Daehwan.

There was no fear, no anger, no hatred. There was nothing at all. He was blank as a slate, void of any and all emotion. It was a message of defiance, a symbol of strength. He was saying straight to his abuser’s face that he wasn’t afraid of him.

What he did next was probably the biggest shock to the system that somebody as arrogant and privileged as Lee Daehwan was ever going receive.

Baekhyun smirked at him. Baekhyun looked away from him.

Baekhyun didn’t pay him the slightest bit of attention for the remaining duration of the trial that day. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will probably be only one more chapter after this but, as I said before, a new story is on the horizon and it follows the same theme as everything else I've written so far. Let me know which idol you think it will centre around.


	23. It Was Over

In total, the trial lasted four days.

The first was for the opening statements. Baekhyun wasn’t in the court room for that part but Jongdae had explained to him later that it was just a chance for the prosecution and the defence to each get the jury on their side by explaining the gist of what had happened.

Then Baekhyun testified. It wasn’t too bad. He looked his lawyer right in the eye and refused to break contact until he’d answered her final question. He managed to block out the jury, ignore his members and even keep Daehwan at the back of his mind.

In that short half hour, the only people who existed in his universe were him and the person who was helping him get justice for his trauma. 

Cross examination followed, and that was when it all fell apart.

The defence lawyer had, for all intents and purposes, called him a liar. He claimed that Baekhyun had been the one to instigate the relationship and that he and Daehwan had slept together on their own free will.

They dumped the entire thing on Tak. He was the one who got jealous. He was the one who beat Baekhyun up when he’d found out. He was the one who lured him from the hotel and tried to murder him. And it was only half true.

In that moment when he’d had a full-grown man practically screaming accusations in his face, insisting he admit that he’d fabricated the entire story as a way of getting back at Daehwan for not keeping Tak on a tight enough leash, Baekhyun was terrified that he would lose this case.

Helpless, on the verge of tears, he’d looked to the gallery for something, anything, that would take away the sensation of hurtling through the air with nothing beneath to catch him and for some reason, his eyes locked with Chanyeol’s.

 _You saved me,_ was the thought that flashed across his mind. _You jumped into the water, risked yourself to get me out. To give me the opportunity to do this. So I could get justice for myself and everybody else who suffered the way that I did. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you._

It was a revelation so strong and so powerful that it eradicated all sense of doubt from his mind.

He knew he could win this. He knew his truth would be told. He knew his lawyer was the best they could have found and he knew that the jury would see, just like everybody did, that Daehwan was guilty through and through.

It was because of that – the reminder of Chanyeol’s part in his survival – that he made it through the cross examination without blubbering like a baby. His lawyer asked him a few more questions to counteract the arguments the defence had made and then it was over.

If Baekhyun had one regret, it would be that he didn’t spit in Daehwan’s face as he walked past but, as it was, he barely made it down from the stand and to the door before his barriers crumbled and his knees gave out.

He’d hit the floor in the middle of the courthouse corridor and almost had to be carried to the car such was the exhaustion that had encompassed his every pore.

There was no way he would have managed to stay for Daehwan’s testimony. Hearing the lies and the victimisation and the _blame_ was sure to destroy him.

In the end, none of his members remained in the building that day. Not one of them wanted to give Daehwan the satisfaction of having an audience.

The emotional toll that was taken on his body from just that first day in court was enough to convince Yixing that he wouldn’t be going back into that room unless it was absolutely necessary.

So the following two days commenced without him. Jongdae and Jongin went in his stead, to report back what was going on and to keep him updated, but Baekhyun was secretly glad for the excuse to stay as far away from that room and that horrible defence attorney as possible.

The second day was reserved for the victims’ statements. Baekhyun’s lawyer read them to the jury and, according to Jongdae, the detail in the descriptions had made each and every one excruciating to listen to.

Baekhyun didn’t regret not having to listen to them but he did feel a little like he’d betrayed the victims who’d been brave enough to stand up and tell their stories.

Jaeseon, Doosik and Youngho testified on the third day. They recounted the events of that night as best as they could, ensuring the judge was well aware of Daehwan’s personality, his history and his determination to get Baekhyun to go home with him.

“One round of Soju says I’ll screw him tonight,” was apparently what Daehwan had told Doosik while Baekhyun was out of earshot.

Detective Park gave his evidence in the afternoon, detailing how the case was investigated, how Daehwan and Tak were interrogated and how, ultimately, Tak gave up the crucial information that led to Baekhyun’s rescue.

When Jongdae and Jongin returned to the apartment that night, Jongdae had taken Baekhyun by the shoulders, looked him in the eye and said, “You’re going to win this. The majority of the jury is on your side already. There’s just one more day to go.”

That was the day Baekhyun was unable to avoid.

He clutched Yixing’s hand for the entire duration of the car ride that morning. He didn’t let go as they were fighting their way through the sea of reporters. He didn’t let go when they were taking their seats in the gallery and he most certainly didn’t let go when Daehwan entered.

The monster looked considerably less cocky than he had at the beginning of the trial. Clearly the stress and the notion that he may not be able to wriggle his way out of this one was getting to him, and his parents weren’t any better.

His mother seemed constantly close to tears, as if she were mourning the loss of the little boy she’d failed to raise properly. His father kept dabbing at the sweat on his brow with a handkerchief, clearly wondering how the child he’d created had become a rapist.

Baekhyun drifted. It seemed as if he just floated up out of his body and began observing everything from above, like he was nothing more than an onlooker.

It was better that way. It meant that he barely heard the closing statements from either side. Even Daehwan’s last chance to plea for leniency was drowned out by the rush of the white noise in his ears.

It was almost over.

It was almost over.

It was almost over.

Fingers still interlocked with Yixing’s, he allowed his body to lean sideways until his head was resting on Chanyeol’s shoulder. Even if somebody had asked him to sit up, he wasn’t sure he would have had the strength.

The weeks of sleeplessness, the exhaustion from all those panic attacks, the residual fatigue from having to keep himself awake and, as a result, alive during those three horrendous days in the ocean was all catching up on him.

It was almost over.

It was almost over.

It was almost over.

“Hyung,” came Chanyeol’s gentle whisper from above. “It’s your turn.”

He blinked his eyes open, unaware of when he’d even closed them, and realised that his lawyer had made her way over to the pews. Now she was standing over him with that same reassuring smile and Baekhyun’s legs felt like jelly.

He’d forgotten about this part.

The Victim Personal Statement. 

“You don’t have to,” his lawyer murmured. “We can skip this bit if that’s what you want.”

“No …” He sounded like he had a mouth full of cotton wool. “No, I … I want to do this.”

Yixing and Chanyeol each gave one of his hands an encouraging squeeze and then, for the second time that week, he found himself sitting in that box. The only difference was that now he didn’t feel a lick of fear or even apprehension.

In fact, he didn’t feel anything at all.

He reached into his blazer pocket and pulled out the folded-up sheet of paper upon which his statement resided. He’d written it over a week ago and now the creases were worn and irreversible from the number of times he’d opened and closed and opened it again.

His gaze briefly scanned the words on the page. He’d repeatedly read them so religiously that he could probably recite them by heart but now they felt alien. Like a word that had lost its meaning from overuse.

He looked up.

There was Daehwan, staring at the table in front of him.

And before Baekhyun knew what he was doing, he was talking, and the words on the paper in his hand were forgotten.

“I don’t know what kind of childhood you had,” he murmured, so softly that if it weren’t for the microphone in front of him, he would have gone unheard. “But let me tell you about mine:

I wasn’t born rich. I didn’t grow up driving sportscars and partying on private yachts and flashing my latest edition iPhone in everybody’s faces. The money that I have now is the money that I made for myself. I used to ask my mother to buy me a chocolate bar when we stopped at the post office every Saturday and most of the time, she didn’t have enough change in her pocket to get me one. Now I pay her medical bills.

When I was nineteen, I became a trainee for SM. Over the next eighteen months, I learned what it was like to truly struggle. I lived in a three-room apartment with eleven other people. I worked so hard that I could barely walk home at the end of the day but I couldn’t afford to take the bus. Even if I had the money to buy myself a meal, I wouldn’t be allowed to eat it because of the diet I was forced on.

You never had that, did you? From the day you were born, everything was handed to you on a silver platter with a bow on top. You don’t know what it feels like to flounder. You don’t know what it feels like suffer. You don’t know what it feels like to … to drown.

I want to know where it went wrong for you. I know I’m not exactly Gandhi but if I grew up the way I did and I still turned out okay then what the hell were you doing, Daehwan? At which stage of your life did you learn that it was okay to take whatever you wanted? At what point did you decide that it didn’t matter if you left somebody permanently traumatised so long as you got satisfaction?

The bruises on my body – some of which are still yet to heal – are not the only marks that you left me with. You slapped me, you punched me, kicked me, choked me. You knocked one of my teeth out, you bruised one of my kidneys. You, Daehwan. Not your little scapegoat. You.

Tak may have been the one who tried to kill me but he never would have had the guts if you hadn’t taken me first. I don’t know if you manipulated him, if you groomed him or if he’s just fucked up, too, but even though he was the one who did more damage, you were the one who gave him the opportunity to.

Do you know what it feels like to have a flashback, Daehwan? I close my eyes and I see your faces. I lie in bed at night and I remember what it was like to have you pin me to the ground after you’d already beaten half the life out of me. When I change my clothes, I feel you ripping them off again. When one of my friends touches me, for the briefest moment, I think it’s you. But then again, that’s what you wanted, isn’t it?

I saw it in your eyes when you were on top of me. You enjoyed it. You liked the power. I’m barely 120 pounds. Of course, I was going to be weaker. Of course, you were going to win. I couldn’t do anything to stop you and that just turned you on, didn’t it? Don’t you feel ashamed? Do you even feel anything?

You will never understand the full extent of what you did to me. I used to love my life and now I’m trapped in my own personal hell. Because of you, my faith and my trust in the human race is gone. Because of you, I don’t think I will ever be able to date or marry without remembering how it felt to have your weight on top of me and your mouth on my neck and your voice in my ear. I could repeat, right now, every word that you said to me. That’s how deeply ingrained in my psyche it is. 

Until the day I die, I will be fighting to remove the stain that you left on me. The person I used to be was murdered because of your greed and your arrogance and your complete disregard for anyone but yourself.

You tried so hard to shut me up. You told me that if I dared report you, all I would ever be known as is “the slutty little homo who cried rape”. I almost broke myself into pieces in order to get to where I am now and you used that – the status that I worked so hard for over the last _ten_ years – as leverage to keep my mouth shut about how you raped me.

You tried to bribe me, blackmail me, threaten me. You sent your family’s lapdog to intimidate me. You went to so many lengths and look where it got you. Look where you are and look where I am.

So, tell the world if that’s what makes you feel like you’re in control. Post it on every social media site. Reveal to everyone who knows who I am that I survived a kidnapping, a beating, two rapes, a murder attempt and three days stranded in the middle of the sea. Tell them about how hard I fought to stay alive and then tell them what you did. We’ll see what happens then, Daehwan.

Maybe I’ll always be “the slutty little homo” but you and I both know that this isn’t a “cry”. There is nothing fabricated about this story and not even all that money can hide the fact that you are and always will be a rapist.

I don’t know what prison is like but I hope it’s hell. I hope you wake up in the dark and the cold and you see my face and you remember that you chose the wrong person to take that night.

What I feel for you isn’t fear anymore. It’s hatred. I hate you with every ounce of my being but I will never – _never_ – be afraid of you again.”

Without waiting for the judge to excuse him, he stepped down off the stand, marched straight past Daehwan’s table and out through the large double doors at the back.

Behind him, he heard a curt, “the jury will now convene to deliberate the verdict,” but he ignored it. He heard the bang of the gavel but he ignored it. He heard Yixing calling his name but he ignored it.

It felt like, for as long as he could recall, he’d been tied down with leaden weights but now those strings had been cut and he was just floating away. He felt weightless, emotionless. Numb.

It was over.

It was over.

It was over.

He’d done everything he could. Whatever happened next would happen. If he was found guilty then he was found guilty and if he wasn’t then he wasn’t. It didn’t matter anymore.

Because Baekhyun had seen it. As he’d passed that table, Daehwan had looked up and their eyes had met and he’d seen it.

Regret.

Not for what he’d done, not for the pain he’d caused but for getting caught and for screwing up so royally that he might very well face multiple years behind bars. He was terrified for his freedom as he rightly should be.

That was how Baekhyun knew that, even if the verdict was ‘not guilty’, Daehwan would never try to hurt another person for fear that they would react just as Baekhyun had and that this time he wouldn’t be so lucky as to get away.

Baekhyun had done that. He’d slain that monster. His monster. Or, at least, one of them. But Tak wasn’t an issue anymore. They had his confession on camera. His trial would be a breeze. Baekhyun might not even need to be there.

Daehwan had been the real threat.

And now he wasn’t a threat at all.

So Baekhyun kept walking.

And it felt good.

**After only 90 minutes’ deliberation, the jury reached a verdict of ‘guilty’ beyond all doubt on the charges of aggravated assault and aggravated rape.**

**Lee Daehwan was sentenced to eight years.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These were the prompts I was given for this fic:  
> Stranded  
> Jealousy  
> Race Against Time  
> Left For Dead  
> Bundled Up In Blankets
> 
> New story will be out soon. Thank you for the support.

**Author's Note:**

> If you have time, please visit these websites to find out how you can help. If you don't have time, do it anyway.
> 
> https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/  
> https://yemencrisis.carrd.co/


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